The Lost
by SGCbearcub
Summary: REPOST - Mulder and Scully lost in the wilderness
1. Chapter 1

A/N – I originally posted this as my third fanfiction somewhere around 2000 after Communication and Illusions.

Title - "The Lost"  
Author - Wintersong  
E-Mail address - wintersong .ca  
Rating - R (language)  
Category - SA, MSR/UST  
Spoilers - Detour, FTF  
Keywords - none  
Summary - Mulder and Scully are trapped in the  
remote wilderness and the art of surviving was  
not what they expected.

Disclaimer: They belong to CC and 1013.

Author's Notes: In deference to all of the  
virtual pilots who have given their lives over  
the years to isolate M&S in wilderness  
circumstances, I have sacrificed a serial killer  
this time.

I should warn everyone that my characters  
rebelled on me and took over the story around  
page 35. I haven't had control since. I  
originally planned (and still plan) to write a  
story called "Found" that explores the  
reactions of the people around M&S to their  
return from their survival situation. I  
personally believe that many of the issues that  
plague ordinary survivors just would not come  
into play for these two and I wanted to show how  
confused things would be for them because they  
would not have the adjustment problems everyone  
expected to see...but they might have others.

"The Lost" was meant to be a short prequel to  
set up the physical situation and many of the  
emotional issues will be explored further or  
resolved in "Found". (If you have any burning  
questions you would like to see answered in  
"Found", please let me know. Pretty please? :o)

As you can see, my *short* prequel got out of  
hand. As a result, some of my research has holes  
in it. I have no idea how long a missing FBI  
agent would have to be missing before the FBI  
froze their paychecks and declared them dead. I  
seem to remember hearing that unless you go to  
court over it, it can take seven years. I'm  
assuming that the military and the government has  
exceptions for these circumstances otherwise the  
family members would have a heck of a time  
collecting pensions.

That's about it. I hope you enjoy the story.

-Wintersong

***********************************************

In Flander's Field

In Flander's Fields the poppies  
blow Between the crosses, row by row,  
That mark our place; and in the sky  
The larks still bravely singing fly,  
Scarce heard amidst the guns below  
We are dead Short days ago we lived, felt dawn,  
saw sunset glow  
Loved and were loved and now we lie in Flander's  
Field  
Take up our quarrel with foe  
To you with failing hands we throw  
The torch be yours to hold it high  
lf ye break faith, with us who die  
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow  
In Flander's Field

-Colonel John McCrae

***********************************************

Samuel Walsh Corman was wonderfully dead.

Three bullet holes dead center mass had done the  
trick beautifully.

Unfortunately, Scully thought, as she glared down  
at the body and resisted giving it a spiteful  
kick, she should have shot the bastard two days  
earlier. Sometimes, being a law-abiding federal  
officer really sucked.

"This really sucks, Scully."

Hearing her own thoughts echoed in disgruntled  
male tones, she looked up to find her partner  
glaring balefully at the corpse bleeding out on  
the snow in front of them. From the expression  
on his face, he had similar visions of Technicolor  
brains splattering satisfactorily across a  
warehouse floor.

"We should have shot the bastard when we  
had the chance."

Yep. Blood and brains it was.

"Either that, or shot the morons who let him  
escape."

"I'm thinking up a slightly more painful revenge  
for them, Mulder."

Mulder's head snapped around at her acid tones,  
then a deliciously malicious grin lit up his  
face. "Oh baby. Can I watch?"

Scully bared her teeth ,"You can hold the  
scalpels for me if you want to."

"I knew there were benefits to having a pathologist  
for a partner."

Scully smiled dutifully at the comeback, then  
soberly took in the disaster facing them.

Nothing but silent wilderness surrounded them in  
all directions. A Currier and Ives layer of snow  
dusted the landscape and big fluffy flakes  
drifted down from a darkening afternoon sky.  
Already, the rutted dirt track they had been  
driving on was coated in a half inch layer of  
snow and the increasing wind was busily erasing  
all signs of their passage. But that was only  
part of the problem.

Against a rocky embankment , Corman's 4-door  
sedan lay in crumpled ruins, smashed into some  
post-modern free-form sculpture of shattered  
plastic and twisted metal. Neo-FBI, Scully mused,  
with the dramatic lines of the X-Files and a hint  
of pathos. She snorted indelicately. Mulder  
looked curious and she gestured toward the car.

"Our lives as art,"

His eyebrows winged upward before he turned to  
study the car for a long moment. Then he smirked,  
"Works for me. But is it a case of seeing truth  
in art, or seeing the art in the truth?"

She stared suspiciously at her partner, then  
tossed her head disdainfully, "College boy."

Walking toward the car she could not see his  
face, but she could hear his voice, "Navy brat."

Standing up close and personal to the mangled  
mess that used to be the driver's side wheel  
well and front quarter-panel,the only thought  
that Scully could come up with, was that they  
were well and truly fucked.

Not that they had had much choice about causing  
the accident.

Both agents had woken from their drugged and  
handcuffed sleep to Corman's insane ranting.  
He may have started out as an organized serial  
killer, but he had been deteriorating rapidly.  
It was one of the reasons they had finally caught  
the bastard. He had himself so worked up that he  
had actually slashed at Scully with a knife  
when she sat up in the backseat. Mulder's  
instinctive move to block his arm had sent Corman  
over the edge. Oblivious to the fact that he was  
speeding up a rutted dirt track slippery with mud  
and newly falling slow, Corman had attacked.  
While Mulder had tried to fend him off from the  
front passenger seat, Scully had launched her  
upper body over the driver's seat from her place  
in the back and desperately grabbed the wheel.

Thank god for kidnappers who handcuff the hands  
to the front.

Corman been thrown back against her when they  
rounded one particularly tight corner and she  
had lost her grip. Luckily he had long since  
taken his foot off the gas or the crash would  
have killed them all.

When Corman staggered out of the car, Mulder had  
tumbled out after him. Corman had gotten his legs  
tangled in the falling agent's body and had  
tripped over him. Screaming in rage the serial  
killer had raised the knife, intending to plunge  
it straight into Mulder...and Scully had blown  
three holes into him with his own damn gun. The  
crash had knocked the glove box open and the gun  
had fallen onto the floor.

In his dementia, Corman had never even noticed.

Now, after unlocking their handcuffs with the  
keys Corman had stuffed into his pocket , Scully  
had to wonder just what they had done to piss  
Fate off this week. This car was not taking  
them anywhere, ever again. Which, considering  
what was about to come down on them, was a very  
bad thing.

"Hey Scully? Do you think they were joking about  
the fact that once it starts snowing in  
Minnesota, it doesn't stop until Spring?"

"Nope."

"'S'what I thought."

They had no idea where they were. They had no way  
of calling for help. They were standing in the  
path of a blizzard. Unless their phones were in  
the trunk of the car, Scully estimated that it  
would be another two days at least before anyone  
missed them. As far as the Minnesota field office  
was concerned, Mulder and Scully flew back to DC  
(this morning?) and were safely out of harm's  
way. Even if the field office called Washington  
to notify them of Corman's escape, Mulder had  
already told Skinner that they were taking a  
short side trip to do some background  
investigation on another case Mulder had for the  
area. Skinner was not expecting them back until  
Monday.

Corman had gotten to them before Mulder had had  
time to rebook their flight, but until someone  
found their rental car or actually noticed  
the empty seats, no one was going to be looking  
for them.

They had a meeting with Skinner on Tuesday. Today  
was probably Friday. Five days. Assuming Skinner  
started looking as soon as they missed the  
meeting, it could be Wednesday before any serious  
investigation got underway. How serious  
that investigation might be was another matter.

They had this reputation for wandering off...

Five days.

At least.

Scully scuffed the road surface under the thin  
layer of snow and was frowning thoughtfully when  
Mulder finally got the trunk open. Her head  
snapped around at his vitriolic curse. Oh shit.  
No jackets, no winter boots, no laptop, no jump  
kit. Nothing. Their weapons and spare clips were  
stuffed under a ratty blue duffel, but the only  
other item in the trunk was an oversized  
toolbox. No cell phones. The contents of the  
toolbox were predictable and ordinary.

The items in the duffel, while also predictable,  
were something else again.

"Damn it!" Mulder turned away abruptly, staring  
at the horizon before giving in and kicking the  
back fender several times in frustrated anger.  
It probably did not help. Scully just stared down  
at his sneakers in horror.

The weather had been deceptively warm the  
last few days and the agents had both dressed  
casually. They had anticipated an eight hour car  
ride with a motel at the end of the journey and  
Mulder was only wearing blue jeans and a black  
turtleneck. Scully herself wasn't any luckier  
with black Capri pants and cream-colored Aran  
sweater. Her boots at least had reflective  
insoles and so far she wasn't feeling the cold,  
but the boots were designed for the city where  
pedestrians made frequent trips indoors to warm  
up. She was under no illusions about what would  
happen once the temperature started dropping.

"Did you happen to notice the weather reports  
Scully?"

He already knew that she had.

"A fucking Arctic front coming down from Canada.  
The first major snowfall of the season. They're  
expecting 18 - 36 inches with high winds.  
And we're stuck right smack dab in the  
middle of it. Fuck!"

Swearing from Mulder was always a bad sign.

"Mulder, we'll need to start building a shelter -  
Is there anything useful in the ki...duffel."

Mulder spun, his eyes locking on hers as he  
caught her slip. The knowledge of what the  
contents of that duffel meant to them was easily  
visible in her eyes and she did not try to hide  
it. That blue bag was more than just a murder  
kit. It was proof positive of how deeply screwed  
they really were.

They both knew the MO too damn well.

Corman had blitzed his victims, incapacitating  
them with a handheld canister of knockout gas.  
Then he drove them to extremely remote, seldom  
used cabins, summer cottages and hunting shacks  
he located weeks or months before through careful  
observation and eavesdropping. He never took the  
owner of the cabin - never left obvious clues and  
it was often months or even years before the  
owner of the cabin ever knew that it had been  
used. There were never any connections between  
the cabins and Corman -so there was no way for  
them to begin to guess where he had been taking  
them.

And nowhere for Skinner to begin a search  
pattern.

"When does deer season start Mulder?"

His lips twisted as he shrugged ignorance.

"We might get lucky and get some week-end  
warriors out practicing for the end of the world,  
but..."

Yeah.

But.

Well...fine.

So they were on their own. Nothing new about  
that. This was just going to take a different  
type of effort than normal. She firmed her jaw  
and tilted her chin stubbornly.

"You will do anything to get out of those monthly  
expense report meetings won't you Mulder?"

She flashed a determinedly bright smile, then  
turned away from her startled partner and stared  
hard into the surrounding woods. Picking several  
likely looking clumps of evergreens, she marched  
in that direction. The snow was only a couple of  
inches deep. That wasn't enough to make the base  
of a tree a practical shelter. She decided a  
debris hut was their best - and warmest - option.  
The falling snow had tapered off to a few  
sporadic flakes but it was an illusion. A  
lull between weather fronts.

The snow was coming.

"I need pine boughs Mulder. Lots and lots of pine  
boughs. "

Mulder, who had been watching her tramp around  
with wary fascination, opened his mouth as if to  
speak, changed his mind, and went pine bough  
hunting. Scully went location scouting. All of  
the fallen trees located close to the crash site  
were too low to the ground or too rotten. Then  
she stumbled over the perfect ridgepole. A larger  
tree had brought down a tangle of younger ones in  
its final death throes and she managed to drag  
one free.

Snapping off the top, she was left with a  
ten foot length of solid tree with most of its  
branches sheared off. Dragging it back to a  
sheltered spot, she jammed the butt end into the  
natural notch on the top of an old tree stump  
that had broken off about three feet from the  
ground Then she used the side of her boot to  
scrape away all the snow and wet debris for three  
feet on either side of the ridgepole.

Collecting armfuls of heavy sticks she laid  
each stick against the ridgepole, forming a  
tent-like skeleton that went from a height of  
three feet at the tree stump, to nothing at the  
other end. Mulder had returned several times to  
drop loads of tree boughs and she swiftly started  
laying them over the walls of the structure,  
interlacing the tiny branches to keep them from  
blowing away.

As much as possible she tried to lay the boughs  
bottom to top - as if laying roofing shingles.  
Armfuls of dry dead leaves and pine needles  
scraped from below the tent-like boughs of the  
larger evergreens around them were dumped over  
the roof until this second layer was almost two  
feet thick. She would have preferred to add  
another foot, but the wind was starting to pick  
up and they were losing the daylight. More pine  
bough shingles were laid to hold the light debris  
in place. She didn't bother trying to add a layer  
of snow. The storm would take care of that by  
morning.

Both agents were tired, sore and soaking wet by  
the time the structure was complete. It was  
getting difficult to see and both sets of hands  
were scratched, bloody and painfully cold.  
A handful of the stronger trees in a cluster of  
young maple trees were growing together at the  
base. Scully doubted that it would be possible to  
tell it was more than a single tree after another  
decade or two. In the process, several tall  
skinny maples in the center of the clump had been  
choked out. The wood was dead and gray, striped  
of bark by the elements, resembling standing  
driftwood. She was able to pull out several  
extremely dry lengths of seasoned maple that  
snapped easily into burnable lengths. A hasty  
search of Corman's body had revealed a book of  
matches and she quickly got a cheerful fire  
burning about twenty feet from the shelter.

The brightness of the fire instantly made the  
rest of the forest seem that much darker, but the  
agents gratefully took advantage of the chance to  
stand close and warm their hands. Mulder saw her  
trying to massage a cramp from her left hand and  
instantly grabbed her wrist and set to work with  
his thumbs. He grinned as she groaned in comic  
relief and cocked a curious eyebrow.

"You've been holding out on me, Agent Scully."

"Ummm?" she opened one eye as the warmth from his  
hands worked out the cramps in hers and just  
enjoyed the heat and smoke from the fire as it  
wreathed around them.

"Why do I have a feeling you've been reading  
something other than the American Medical Journal  
and the Law Enforcement Bulletin lately?"

She smiled," You keep dragging me into  
the woods, Mulder. I had to do something in self-  
defense."

He chuckled, then dropped her hands, "So what's  
next?"

Scully sighed. "Not much we can do until  
tomorrow. We're just about out of daylight."

Studiously avoiding thoughts about what the  
plastic tarp they found in the duffel had  
probably been used for, the agents had placed it  
on the ground inside the shelter. They piled in  
leaves and pine needles until they had a ground  
layer about a foot and a half thick. Carpet  
ripped from the trunk of the car was laid on top.  
Two garbage bags -one of several found in the  
blue duffel, were stuffed with more loose debris  
and would be used to block the entrance once they  
were inside.

All in all, it was a damn fine shelter if she did  
say so herself.

She dropped another couple of logs on the fire  
and helped Mulder drag over a log large enough to  
use as a bench. Then, they pulled off boots and  
sneakers and carefully propped up socked feet  
near the fire as they waited for them to dry and  
for the snow in the now emptied toolbox placed  
next to the fire to melt. A plastic bag currently  
resting in the toolbox held melting drinking  
water.

Mulder had made a disgusted face as she pressed  
the second bag of water on him, but did not  
protest. Orange urine was nothing to sneeze at.  
He knew as well as she did that dehydration could  
kill. People had dehydrated in cold weather to  
the point where their blood thickened and they  
did not bleed when cut. The side effects from the  
side effects were more than enough to keep him  
gulping as much water as she wanted him to drink.

Even if it did mean he would be getting up in the  
middle of blizzard to pee.

Water was not going to be an issue, but food sure  
was. There had been nothing, absolutely nothing,  
in the car. Mulder had stripped Corman's body  
before his sphincter muscles relaxed and rendered  
his jeans extremely unpleasant. The dead killer's  
sneakers were too small for him and much too  
large for Scully but he had dropped them into the  
car along with the flannel shirt and jeans Corman  
had been wearing. Mentioning to Scully about  
washing the blood out before using them for fear  
of attracting animals to the shelter, he had been  
a bit taken aback by the suddenly thoughtful  
expression on her face.

Her next action, however, had shocked the hell  
out of him.

Rifling through the blue duffel she had located  
a large hunting knife with a wicked edge. She  
also grabbed up a crushed paper coffee cup that  
had pretty much been designated future tinder  
and made her way back to Corman's exposed corpse.  
Corman had gone down in the middle of the road,  
and a thin layer of snow had already begun to  
melt and freeze on his body.

Without warning, Scully reached out with the  
knife and sliced him open from stem to stern.

"Uh Scully? I think we know what killed him. We  
really don't need an autopsy."

She had shot him a look of amused irritation - or  
was that irritated amusement? Then she severed  
the abdominal artery and blood started to flow  
sluggishly into the body cavity. Dumping in  
the warm water she had carried in the paper cup  
she used the knife to stir the gory mixture.  
Mulder had watched, nauseated, and his brain had  
started flipping through references to MacBeth's  
witches and the casting of the runes with the  
entrails of a goat. Not to mention every single  
case he had ever dealt with that had anything to  
do with human cannibalism. He swallowed sharply  
and considered the fact that a photographic  
memory could be a real bitch sometimes.

He was unaccountably relieved when all she did  
was start scooping out cups of watered down blood  
and started walking toward the small field and  
trees across the road from their shelter. She  
left a bloody trail behind her. She did this  
several more times until Corman lay at the center  
point of a large half-circle of bloody spokes all  
leading into the woods. From the air, it was  
probably a highly visible target, but it would be  
covered by snow by morning. On the upside, he had  
figured out what she was doing. She was trying to  
get the food to come to them.

"Scully? What if we get a bear? I'm not  
sure we have enough ammo to kill a bear."

"We get a bear, Mulder, I'll make sure we have  
enough ammo."

Watching her standing there, her face distant,  
her hands and exposed wrists streaked with blood  
with an eviscerated corpse splayed out at her  
feet like some obscene sacrifice, he had  
believed every word she said. Watching her now,  
the drama of the moment receded into memory, the  
firelight turning her skin a burnished gold, he  
still believed her. Her capability for ruthless  
determination exceeded his own. He had always  
known that. As hot as his passions burned, their  
very nature could work against him when directed  
inward. Hers was a cold rage, as terrifying as it  
was effective for the simple fact that it  
remained undiluted. It hid beneath proper suits  
and government haircuts, emerging only in flashes  
after she had been pushed to some unforeseen  
breaking point.

Every lost piece of evidence, every covert action  
that violated her sense of justice and honor,  
every time he came a hair's breath distance from  
death, the edge on that rage was honed just a  
little bit finer. Their enemies had absolutely no  
idea what they were creating. He was not sure  
Scully herself knew. She looked in the mirror and  
saw the youth her lost naivete and injured  
innocence had leached from her face. He saw  
tempered strength and commitment.

She saw loss...he saw truth.

If his passions were a weapon then her hand,  
guided by cold logic and ruthless fury , would  
strike the final blow.

And nothing...not a serial killer, not a blizzard  
and not even themselves - was going to stop her.

He was looking forward to it. 


	2. Chapter 2

An hour after the sun dropped, the agents were  
brutally made aware of the fact that whatever  
plans they had they would have to do all their  
work during the day until they found a way to  
protect themselves from the elements. Not  
even standing two feet from the fire compensated  
for the wind driven chill that ate at their  
backs. They wormed their way into the shelter and  
spent several hilarious moments trying to strip  
down to their underwear without killing each  
other with a misplaced knee or elbow. The burrow  
was already warming up rapidly and would be even  
warmer once covered with a thick layer of  
insulating snow.

Mulder argued briefly that it might be warmer to  
use the shirts as blankets, but Scully pointed  
out that the whole point was to use their body  
heat to warm the shelter itself. Plus, sweating  
into their clothes would reduce any insulating  
value the clothes had during the daytime. He had  
shrugged and within a remarkably short time, the  
tiny burrow was actually quite comfortable.

Spooned up against each other, the fit was still  
a tight one. Deliberately. The biggest mistake  
anyone ever made was making the shelter too  
large. Scully blessed the week-ends she had spent  
practicing building these things last winter.

That first week-end, she had almost frozen to  
death and the park ranger who had stopped at her  
campsite the next morning had just shaken his  
head and pointed out what she was doing wrong.  
He had made a couple of cautious remarks about  
the fact she was out alone, but she had  
accidentally flashed her holster when bending  
over to pick up a load of firewood and he had  
closed his mouth with a rather abrupt snap. Not  
that Scully had any illusions that a gun  
guaranteed her safety, but the campground was  
mostly frequented by families, had a fair amount  
of traffic and she felt fairly confident all else  
considered.

Besides, after liver-eating mutants and ax-  
wielding cannibals, she found it a bit hard to  
get worked up over garden variety perverts and  
muggers. It probably said something that she  
found the thought of dealing with something that  
she actually knew would die if she shot it once  
or twice to be mildly relaxing. The average  
FBI agent carried one extra clip.

She carried three.

She had planned to invite Mulder along on that  
first trip but he had pissed her off about  
something and a vague desire to practice new  
skills had quickly gotten mixed up with a  
burning ambition to rub his nose in his  
ignorance. She sighed as she considered their  
current situation. Not quite the trial by fire  
she had imagined. A half-formed plan involving  
lots of laughter and hot chocolate with  
marshmallows had just died a very abrupt death.

Why was she not surprised?

With their luck they should just defect over to  
the other side and plan the damn invasion  
themselves. She would give it a week tops before  
the whole thing started crashing down in a  
flaming mass of catastrophic self-destruction.  
The aliens wouldn't know what hit them...

Of course, there were no such things as  
aliens.

Scully smiled at her own automatic qualification  
and turned her drowsy attention back to the  
problems at hand. She wasn't worried about  
freezing anything essential in their sleep.  
Once she had managed to get her last shelter  
constructed properly, she had spent that night  
in nothing more than winter underwear on what  
later proved to be the coldest January night  
of the year. She hadn't even noticed the  
temperature drop. Between the two of them,  
they would put out more than enough body heat  
to keep this burrow warm.

Especially Mulder.

For a moment she sleepily considered the fact  
that men seemed to radiate twice as much heat as  
women. It was logical - more muscle mass and less  
insulation. Of course, it meant he would also  
need to eat twice as much just to survive.  
Considering that she seemed to be the primary  
beneficiary of that extra body heat at the moment  
she supposed she would not argue too much if she  
ended up hunting extra rabbits.

She suppressed a giggle.

"What's so funny?"

Trust Mulder to know when she was smiling in the  
dark. She answered without thinking.

"Male physiology Mulder. You're putting out so  
much body heat I'm considering cuffing you to the  
bed while I do the hunting so I have a warm place  
to come back to."

There was an astonished silence behind her and  
she was momentarily thrown off balance when the  
expected double entendre never came. It wasn't  
like she hadn't walked right into that one.

"Mulder?"

"Just a second Scully. " the raspy quality of his  
voice as well as...other things, alerted her to  
the problem.

Her face began to ache as her grin stretched  
wider. "Relax Mulder, I'm a doctor."

His sigh was part humor, part resignation "I'm  
not going to have any dignity left at all by the  
end of this am I?"

She snickered," Male physiology, involuntary  
responses to suggestive stimuli. I won't hold it  
against you "

Her partner groaned again, then rested his chin  
against the top of her head, "My instructor  
didn't exactly cover the etiquette for these  
circumstances in the FBI survival course."

"Mine did."

She could almost feel the eyebrows shooting  
straight up, "You're joking."

She shook her head automatically, "Nope.  
Actually...", Scully hesitated, then plowed on,  
keeping her voice even, "...she made a very good  
point. She claimed that surviving was only half  
the battle. Living with whatever happened was the  
second half. She...also mentioned that emotions  
and responses get very...intense, very primitive  
in these situations. "

Mulder was silent for a moment. She knew he knew  
what she was talking about. She might have  
thought him uncomfortable with the abrupt way the  
subject had come up except his body didn't tense  
and his breathing remained even. When he finally  
spoke, his voice was contemplative, even curious.  
She should have known.

The profiler at work.

"Was she talking about what I think she  
was talking about?"

Scully dithered for a moment then plunged full  
steam ahead. "She almost lost her partner over  
it. They were stranded after a plane crash for  
a few days and things got...personal. But they  
couldn't handle it back in the real world. They  
almost split up and I got the impression they  
never got back to where they were before..."

Her voice trailed off. The unspoken fear was  
suddenly very real and easy to hear in the  
darkness. She had not realized how real until  
this moment. There was so much at stake. So much  
that could go wrong. This situation was an  
immediate physical reality and all the normal  
rules were suspended. But there would be a later.  
An after. A time when they would have to go back  
to the rules.

What happened then?

Mulder was quiet for a long time. Surprisingly,  
it wasn't an awkward silence. She waited for him  
to come to whatever conclusions he needed to  
find.

"I don't think we can pretend that this is an  
artificial world and that nothing that happens  
can just be ignored once we get back"

He was choosing his words carefully. Scully  
murmured a soft sound of agreement and he  
continued.

"At the same time, I don't think it's fair to  
beat ourselves up if something does happen  
because of the circumstances. I think we've  
pretty much proven that adrenaline alone is  
something we can handle."

His voice was dry, and Scully smiled  
involuntarily as she considered the sheer number  
of opportunities they had had to go off the rails  
over the years. Heck, there had been times when  
fifteen minutes of hot sweaty sex would have been  
easier than the hours of cold showers, sharp-  
edged tempers and over-sensitive nerve-endings.

Easier, but not better.

That wasn't the way their partnership worked. It  
wasn't the way they worked. They couldn't just  
use each other and then go on the next morning as  
if nothing had happened. There were times she had  
wished that wasn't true. There were times she had  
wished they were different people.

But that's just the way it was.

So adrenaline wasn't the problem. Enforced  
long-term physical proximity under emotionally  
charged circumstances was a different story.

There had always been room to get away.

Mulder could go running. She could bury herself  
in reports, or autopsies or visits to her mother.  
Only now, there was no place to go. They needed  
each other in close contact just to survive and  
the only thing they had to distract them - the  
fight for their survival - was the thing that  
would be driving their primitive emotional  
responses in the first place. The lack of privacy  
alone would eventually lead to some sort of  
emotional explosion.

Sex was probably preferable to killing each  
other.

"I won't lose you because of an accident of  
biology ,Scully. Promise me. Promise me that  
whatever happens...we'll talk about it after we  
get back and after we have time to think about  
it. We talk, we scream, we go to counseling...I  
don't care. Just ...promise me we won't let this  
destroy us."

As calm as he had been before, his words now  
shocked her. Somehow, his ease had fled and she  
had not even noticed. The plea was torn directly  
from the heart, the words raw-edged and bleeding.  
She thought, perhaps, even Mulder was caught off  
guard by his sudden desperate fear.

Unexpected tears burned down her cheeks and she  
took him by surprise when she flipped over,  
wrapped her arms around his waist and tightened  
her grip. It was not a gentle hug or gesture of  
reassurance. It wasn't even a promise. It was a  
bruising refusal to let him go. A steel-edged  
determination that was more threat than pledge to  
let nothing ...absolutely nothing, come between  
them.

Not even themselves.

Mulder's body relaxed even as his arms tightened.  
They would be okay. Whatever happened, whatever  
came out of this situation...they would be okay.

That was all that mattered.

They found themselves drifting as the sound of  
the wind outside built to a howl, then gradually  
faded as a layer of insulating snow slowly  
drifted over their burrow and wrapped them in a  
dark pocket of silence and comforting warmth.  
Scully fell asleep to the comforting rhythm of  
her partner's beating heart. Lulled by the  
familiar sound of her breathing, Mulder followed  
close behind.

***********************************************

"Tell me again why you're doing all the work?"

"Because someone needs to tend the fire and  
Corman's clothes don't fit you."

Mulder glared as he watched his partner pull the  
dead killer's flannel shirt and baggy jeans over  
her own clothes. The ragged ends of the too long  
jean legs had been hacked off and were wrapped  
around her hands and wrists. More strips of  
fabric and narrow lengths of foam cut from the  
seat cushions gave them ragged headbands  
protecting neck and ears. The cloth from the  
backseat now did duty as rough gaiters that kept  
the snow from the tops of their boots and  
sneakers.

The initial storm had blown over them in the  
night dropping almost a half a foot of snow  
over everything. The morning was dawning  
relatively warm and breeze-free. Nothing had  
approached the body during the night and knowing  
that the warm weather was temporary, Scully had  
quickly fashioned a crude pair of diamond shaped  
snowshoes using sticks and strips of fabric cut  
from the car upholstery. Co-opting the rope from  
Corman's duffel as well as several lengths of  
wire ripped from the car, she set out to run  
rabbit snares.

Mulder had been relegated to firewood and camp  
maintenance duty as he was the one with the  
least amount of clothing available to him. Once  
he had a sizable pile of firewood however and  
made sure that the toolbox was full of melting  
slush and had rewarmed and dried his feet and  
hands, Mulder began to get bored.

He knew Scully was hoping to get some rabbits. He  
had mentioned rabbit starvation, but she had  
only laughed and said, "Mittens, Mulder, not  
food". Not that the meat would go unappreciated  
right about now, he thought hungrily. You might  
starve to death if you ate nothing but  
rabbits...but you would starve to death eating  
nothing too.

Two gunshots in quick succession echoed in the  
far distance. His head jerked up and he listened  
intently. He told himself to calm down. If she  
was in trouble, she would have fired off three.  
So...assume that your partner is fine Agent  
Mulder and deal with it. Go...collect more  
firewood or something. Except he was heartily  
sick of collecting wood, there was enough to last  
them at least two more days and he needed  
something else to do. He considered what it might  
mean if Scully had actually shot something with  
fur.

He turned over her statement about mittens. They  
would have to do something with the skin wouldn't  
they. Tan it or something? He vaguely recalled  
that smoke had something to do with the process.  
And scraping. The skins needed to be scraped.  
That would make one hell of a mess. Not exactly  
something they would want next to their burrow.  
And they would need some shelter while they  
worked.

Mulder considered possible options and then  
trudged out after more pine boughs.

It was late afternoon when he heard someone  
stomping through the snow towards the camp.  
Mulder dashed out into the open just in time to  
see a bedraggled Scully stagger out onto the  
road obviously making a large circle around  
the camp. The shock of seeing her covered in  
blood was offset by the blinding ear to ear  
grin plastered across her face.

"Mulder!"

She was sweaty, her face was scratched, her make-  
shift snowshoes had obviously fallen apart  
somewhere outside of camp because she was soaked  
from her waist to her feet...and he had never  
seen such a joyous look of accomplishment and  
pride in his life. The grin was contagious.

"Isn't he beautiful Mulder?"

In the shock of that grin and the blood, Mulder  
had not seen what she had hauled back. He looked  
past her shoulder expecting to see several  
rabbits or maybe a coyote. What he saw made his  
jaw drop. Scully had got a buck. An honest to  
god-probably weighed more than she did - deer.  
And she had dragged it back herself. Mulder did  
not even want to think about how it must have  
caught and snagged on every bush and shrub. From  
the look of her, she had felt every mile. Or had.  
Right now all she was feeling was good about  
herself.

He obligingly let out a rebel yell,"Food! "

Then he carefully pulled off the blood stained  
flannel, wrapped his arms around her waist and  
lifted her into a vertebrae straightening hug.  
"You can have anything. I will do reports, I will  
do expense accounts. Just tell me you know how to  
cook that beast."

Scully laughed, then grinned at him when he put  
her back on her feet.

"Jesus Scully, he's bigger than you are. "

"He ran right at me Mulder. You wouldn't believe  
it. One minute I'm trying to set a trap and the  
next this thing is racing toward me. I think he  
would have run me over if I hadn't shot him. "

Mulder bent over the body and peered at the chest  
and whistled. "Pretty damn good shot under any  
circumstances. I think you got him right in the  
heart."

Scully grimaced."Yeah. And he got me right in  
the thigh with his hoof. He wasn't as dead as he  
looked when I went to check on him. "

Mulder gave the blood on her face another sharp  
glance. "Is any of that yours?"

She shook her head. "I didn't think I'd have the  
time to bleed him out and then drag him home and  
I didn't want to risk anything stealing him so I  
just cut the throat and let him bleed as I  
dragged. We should keep a good watch tonight.  
Something may try to follow the blood trail. We  
also need to hang and skin him as soon as  
possible."

Mulder brightened and grabbed the rope harness  
Scully had fastened around the deer and started  
dragging it across the road. Despite being  
tired and wet, she trailed curiously along behind  
him. She started to help with the hauling, but  
her shoulders were so sore that she did not  
protest when he gestured for her to let him do  
it. She had dragged the bloody thing for over  
three hours. She deserved a break.

She wasn't expecting what she saw.

Astonished, she turned wide eyes on Mulder as he  
proudly showed off the planned features of their  
brand-new skinning and tanning lean-to. Despite  
the fact that it wasn't finished, the sheer  
amount of work he had already put into it showed  
clearly.

"Wow."

He grinned."All the comforts of the home garage.  
How do you want to do this?"

Mulder was standing near two trees about five  
feet apart. Both had solid branches sticking out  
about twelve feet from the ground.

Scully sighed, thought about going back to the  
fire and taking a sponge bath and collapsing into  
the burrow-preferably with a nice warm body  
beside her to chase away the cold. Then she  
considered how much more work this would be in  
the morning after she had had all night to  
stiffen up.

"The hard way, Mulder. What else?"

He smiled ruefully, acknowledging the truth, then  
bounded back to the camp to get the rest of the  
rope. Watching her partner do a good imitation of  
Tigger on acid, she wondered just where in the  
hell he got his energy - and whether it was  
something you could bottle. Shaking her head as  
she smiled, she laboriously undid the knots  
holding the rope to the deer as well as the ones  
forming the harness. She had just finished when  
Mulder shot her a concerned look.

"Do you want to warm up by the fire first  
Scully?"

"I'm more tired than cold. I've been moving  
enough and it's been mild today."

That in itself was one of the reasons she had  
fought so hard to get the deer back. The weather  
had been unbelievably mild in the wake of the  
snow storm - and they knew it couldn't last. The  
storm had been the leading edge of a warm front  
trapped between a moving pressure system and an  
arctic front sweeping down from the North.  
Unfortunately, the arctic part of that equation  
was still headed their way. Scully figured they  
had maybe three days at most before the  
temperature dropped dramatically.

They not only needed food desperately, the  
clothes they had just were not up to colder  
temperatures. Not without a search and rescue  
party a couple of days behind them. With the  
passing of the front, the breeze had died to  
almost nothing. That would change as soon as the  
arctic ridge moved in. They needed some form of  
wind protection if they were to survive this  
thing.

Using the hunting knife, Scully pierced each  
back leg just where the leg bones met the ankle.  
They each threaded one end of their separate  
ropes through the hole, pushing it through with  
the knife where necessary, and then secured the  
end around the leg with a slip knot. Mulder  
tossed the other end of his rope over the lower  
branch of the tree on the right - she did the  
same on the left. Then, pulling in unison, they  
hauled the animal into the air by his back legs.  
They tied the ends of the ropes to their  
respective trees and stepped back to study their  
deer.

Mulder was stared at the carcass with speculative  
eyes.

"Come on G-man. The sooner we get this done, the  
sooner we get to the shish kabobs"

Mulder smiled dutifully, but she could see the  
wheels turning. The deer was tangible proof that  
they could do more than huddle and hope to  
shoot enough rabbits to survive until search and  
rescue found them...or not. The deer alone would  
not give them enough to walk out...not if they  
wanted to do it smart.

But it was a start.

The lack of food or supplies of any kind in the  
car suggested that either Corman had been  
planning to leave them at the kill site while he  
went for supplies...or that he already had  
everything ready. The gas tank was just under  
half full, but that did not mean that the cabin  
in question was anywhere close. Nor could they  
count on stumbling over someone else's cabin.  
Even assuming they weren't on government land of  
some kind, half these hunters took in snowmobiles  
and ATV's. There would be nothing visible from  
the road.

And realistically, half these hunting cabins were  
little more than shacks. They would not have  
phones. All they would do if they did find a  
cabin was do exactly what they were doing now.  
Hunt down the resources they needed to walk out  
of the bush.

"Three weeks, Scully."

"What?"

" If they don't find us in the next three weeks,  
I think we should plan to walk out. "

He turned his head to pin her with serious eyes.

"They'll assume that Corman has us, but they  
don't know for sure. If it goes three weeks..."

After three weeks, no one would have any reason  
to think that they were still alive.

Scully nodded absently as she considered his  
timeline. Three weeks would put them to  
November. Considering they had no idea how far  
they might be from civilization, it could take  
days...maybe weeks to walk out. They did NOT want  
to be doing that in January. Any less than four  
weeks and they ran the risk of not being well  
enough equipped to survive. It was frustrating  
... especially since she knew it was more  
than possible that civilization was just over the  
hill. A snowplow could come chugging down the  
road any minute, or they could find out that  
they were a bare couple of miles from a major  
highway. Or they could be 200 km into a state  
park on a road that had already been closed for  
the season.

Better safe than sorry.

She shivered suddenly as a small gust of wind  
whipped through her shirt and stole the remaining  
heat from her earlier exertion. They were not in  
any condition to walk anywhere. Not like this.  
Scully moved the last few steps to the fire and  
met Mulder's eyes soberly.

"Three or four weeks sounds about right to me."

Feeling the ache in her bones as she contemplated  
the task ahead, she reminded herself to be  
grateful for last night's good sleep. She had a  
feeling both of them might be working through the  
night to get this done. She debated again whether  
or not it was worth waiting and then realized  
that they still had at least another hour of  
daylight. It would be a shame to waste it.

She picked up the hunting knife and went to work.

Cutting completely around each back ankle, she  
carefully sliced through the skin of each inner  
leg until she reached the anus. Cutting a  
complete circle around it, she carefully  
reached her fingers in as she neared the last  
cut. Before severing it completely, she wrapped  
her hand around the end of the colon and motioned  
Mulder to give her a hand. Then, leaving one very  
surprised FBI agent holding the ass end of the  
deer's digestive tract, she sliced straight down  
the belly from vent to neck. Mulder yelped as his  
arm was dragged forward as the entire intestinal  
tract plus stomach spilled out onto the ground.  
Luckily he kept a hold of his end. With the  
bowel out of the carcass she no longer had to  
worry about tainting the meat. Mulder spent  
several slippery and very bloody minutes hauling  
the offal away from the work area and he piled it  
carefully where they could pick through it later.  
The scent glands at the base of the tail were  
tossed into the woods.

With the body cavity emptied, Scully debated  
briefly, then separated head from body with a few  
deft cuts of the knife. All those autopsies were  
coming in handy she thought with grim amusement.  
Ignoring the odd look her partner gave her as she  
handed him the head and told him to put it  
somewhere safe, she turned back to the carcass.  
She sliced around the ankles of the forelegs,  
then sliced up each inner leg until she hit the  
neck. It was almost as simple as slipping off a  
coat after that. Starting from the top, she  
worked her hands between meat and skin, using the  
knife only when the connective tissue refused to  
give. The heavy hide peeled away from the body.

Mulder helped by pulling the hide away from her  
hands, but for the most part they let the weight  
of the hide and gravity do most of the work.  
There was still a bit of daylight left when the  
last of it dropped from the carcass with a  
muffled thump. Wordlessly Mulder dragged it into  
the lean-to and folded it awkwardly, fur side in.  
Scully sliced off long thin slices of deer meat  
and Mulder started scooping snow into the  
trunk of the car by the armful.

Once he had a hard packed layer covering the  
floor, he hauled back deer strips by the dozen.  
Laying them carefully without overlap, he left a  
good six inches from the sides of the trunk to  
keep the meat from touching metal or thawing if  
the metal warmed in the sunlight, then he scooped  
more snow over top. More packing , more layers of  
meat, then more hard-packed snow. It was a tight  
fit, but it all went in. He left enough space  
at the top for an airspace, then shut the trunk  
lid gratefully.

On one of his trips he had threaded several  
slices of meat onto sharpened green sticks and  
the scent of warm roasting meat made his mouth  
water as he stumbled back to the fire for the  
last time. As he called her name, Scully placed  
her hands at her back, straightened painfully and  
looked around blankly as if surprised to find the  
daylight gone. She also seemed vaguely surprised  
by the missing pile of meat next to her feet.  
Mulder was not totally certain she had heard him  
when he had told her what he was doing with it.

"Ready for dinner, Scully?"

She groaned as she staggered over to the cooking  
fire and sat down on a log hauled there earlier  
for their seating convenience. The low level of  
the seat had both their legs sprawled out at  
awkward angles, but neither complained. He  
handed her a skewer of meat with a slight  
flourish and bow and she smiled in tired  
appreciation.

"I don't think I've ever been this tired,  
Mulder."

"Not even in med-school?"

He tasted the meat cautiously, the tore into it  
with teeth and hands when he found it not too hot  
to the touch. He grinned blissfully as the taste  
of roasted grease exploded across his tastebuds.  
McDonald's had nothing on this.

"I don't think so. Of course I was younger in med  
school. "

Mulder grinned around a mouthful of venison,  
"Don't remind me. I'm glad I was 26 when I was  
with ViCap.I think the BSU coffee alone would  
kill me now."

Hunger was the ultimate spice.

The next twenty minutes were a companionable  
silence filled only with the sound of steady  
mastication and slight moans of flavor-derived  
ecstasy. Finally, stomachs satisfied and fingers  
licked clean, the practical issue of what to do  
next arose. Between the blood trail in this  
direction and the bits and pieces of dead deer  
scattered all over the place, there was a good  
chance something would come  
Mulder felt his partner still had her eye on a  
pair of fur mittens, but considering what she had  
already bagged he was not going to complain. If  
Scully wanted a dead carnivore, she could have as  
many as he could shoot. he volunteered to take  
the first watch and it was a mark of how  
exhausted his partner was when she did not even  
put up a token protest.

Back at camp, Scully found a toolbox full of warm  
water Building up the fire until it radiated heat  
for several feet, she stripped off the clothes  
she was wearing and used a spare piece of car  
upholstery to wash the blood and sweat from her  
body. It was awkward doing it slowly enough that  
her skin dried against the warmth from the flames  
before washing another part down. Awkward and  
cold. But she got the blood off.

She had rinsed her socks out even before starting  
and they had been steaming gently by the fire.  
Now, standing in only her underwear and boots  
she tried to rinse her blood-stained clothes.  
Pouring cupful after cupful through the fabric to  
get most of the blood out, she shivered as the  
water splashed back up against her legs and  
cursed as she considered that there had to be  
a better way to do this. Finally figuring that  
they were as good as they were going to get...at  
least this night, Scully wrung them out and hung  
them by the fire to dry. Then she dumped more  
snow into the box to melt and grabbed her now dry  
socks. Her last thought after she dove into the  
burrow ,sealed it up with the garbage bag and  
pulled on her socks, was a momentary regret for  
the missing comfort of a second body curled up  
with her.

Closing her eyes, she was asleep before she  
completely drew her next breath. 


	3. Chapter 3

Walter Skinner hated getting midnight phone  
calls. There were very few reasons why anyone  
would be calling him after eleven at night and  
none of them were personal. Not anymore.  
Emergency strategy sessions for on-going VCU  
investigations were one reason, but in general,  
the only reason anyone called him after midnight  
was to tell him that one of his agents was in  
trouble.

Or dead.

With Mulder and Scully it had been both. On  
several occasions. But it never got any easier.  
Last time a gun shot, this time a forgotten  
signature leading to a rushed trip to the airport  
only to discover two empty seats and an abandoned  
rental car empty of personal effects. Secretly,  
every time that damn phone rang, he knew,  
absolutely knew, that it was someone calling him  
to tell him that his most unusual pair of agents  
had finally gone too far out on that limb...and  
hung themselves.

And every time that call came in, he prayed that  
it was something that he could fix.

He wondered sometimes if his two problem children  
had any idea just how many irate phone calls he  
had taken from everyone from annoyed military  
police all the way up to pissed off SACs and  
livid Congressmen. And they were just the ones  
his two mavericks angered in the general run of a  
normal investigation. OPR, the Consortium and -  
god help him - the press, were issues all by  
themselves.

The funny thing was, the more complaints that his  
agents generated, the more he became convinced  
that what they did was necessary. Accounting  
might have a problem when doing a cost-benefit  
analysis. Their solve rate was way above bureau  
average, but excepting the VCU and HRT, their  
actual cost per agent was off the charts. But how  
could he explain to people who wanted to boil  
everything down to a dollar figure that the value  
of the X-Files wasn't always its closure rate or  
even the number of lives saved. It wasn't even  
about saving the world from alien invasion.

It was about asking the questions to which no one  
wanted answers.

No one except the victims.

He had turned his back on the possibilities that  
day in the jungles of Vietnam. Closed his eyes  
and let fear blind him to potential truths. The  
cowardice of a nineteen year old boy had haunted  
the man for over two decades, an omni-present  
weakness forever threatening the foundation his  
life was built upon. Ironically, it wasn't Mulder  
who had been the final push that had finally  
caused him to take a stand against his own  
demons...it had been Scully.

As much as he had been able to admire the man's  
admitted genius and passionate conviction in his  
beliefs, it had been too easy to see him as  
simply another pawn caught in the Consortium web.  
For a marine turned career FBI, Mulder's  
disregard for regulations and seemingly foolish  
reliance on political connections to haul his  
butt out of the fire had been offensive. It had  
taken Skinner longer than he liked to admit and  
several sessions of seeing the man through his  
partner's eyes to realize that it wasn't that  
Mulder didn't think the rules applied to him, it  
was just that he believed so passionately in  
righting the wrong or revealing the lie, that  
personal considerations and costs tended to fly  
out the window.

Nothing like another man's courage to humiliate  
one into taking a stand.

Skinner had never realized how few survival  
instincts Mulder actually had regarding his  
personal health and well-being. Looking back, he  
would have pointed to his escape from the  
BSU as being made in order to save himself. And,  
perhaps, deep inside, there had been some  
contempt that he had not been able to cut it.

His conscious mind knew better, knew the horrors  
the BSU hid in the basement. Mulder's emotions  
ran so close to the surface and his actions  
seemed so naive sometimes - but the fact was,  
that most BSU profilers had years in other  
departments. Mulder's mistakes had been subject  
to both inexperience and youth. Skinner had known  
that too. But sometimes, sometimes he had just  
seemed so helpless, so...weak.

Knowing what he knew now of Mulder's personality  
and the criminally brutal program Patterson had  
devised for his pet team of experimental  
profilers, he had come to believe that Mulder had  
foreseen Patterson's ultimate end for himself.  
Mulder hadn't been trying to save Mulder. He'd  
been trying to protect everyone else from  
what he feared he was becoming.

Without that knowledge however, Skinner's initial  
assessment of the agent had been tainted with  
preconceptions and he had never looked past  
a list of perceived faults that had included lack  
of discipline, irresponsibility, political  
blindness and naivete, undeserved arrogance and  
emotional instability. Scully's unexpected and  
ferocious loyalty toward her partner had been a  
shock. So had her anger with her superiors over  
their reactions to her reports, and later, the  
official criticism for her perceived lack of  
judgement with regard to Mulder.

They had lost her the minute she realized that  
their trust was only skin-deep. That her opinion  
only mattered when it agreed with their own.

It would have made his life easier if he could  
have suspected personal involvement.  
Unfortunately, he was not that lucky. Scully's  
loyalties threw a harsh light, and he had been  
forced to take a good hard look at his own  
preconceptions and actions.

Oh the agents had made mistakes. Stupid ones in  
hindsight. But considering the fact that they did  
not know what he knew, and considering the very  
significant efforts being made to keep them in  
ignorance, their courage had been astounding.  
They just would not stop. They would not quit.  
Mulder because he needed to know the truth...and  
Scully because she wanted justice. He had almost  
laughed when he realized that the shadow men  
were worried about the supporting effect of her  
loyalty on her partner.

Didn't they get it?

Personal loyalty only went so far. After that,  
commitment had to come from the soul. Mulder's  
ability to earn her respect, admiration and  
support said more to the ex-marine than her  
loyalty. Any partner would have had that. What  
she gave to Mulder...that terrified him. Because  
it meant that maybe there was more to Mulder  
than he had seen. That maybe the fight was  
righteous.

And now Mulder had someone who believed in  
him. That validation, that feedback loop would  
drive them both further than either would go  
alone. Further than the shadow men ever thought  
they could go.

There was a growing army of voiceless victims and  
silent witnesses to atrocity getting ready to  
follow. Mulder and Scully were being watched much  
more closely than they could ever realize. They  
had survived long enough for their names...and  
the nature of their honor to become known. Fear  
would only hold the silent for so long. Then the  
anger would batter down the walls and the clarion  
call to battle would begin.

Walter Skinner had already fought one war. He did  
not want to see the aftermath of another. But if  
the time came...when the time came...and Mulder  
and Scully led the charge...

He would be standing there right behind them...

Watching their backs...

Where he belonged.

********************************************

Despite the fact that they had planned for it,  
Mulder really did not expect to see any large  
predators. It seemed a bit much to expect all  
their fur-bearing needs to fall into their laps  
on the same day. So, despite the copious amounts  
of blood that had been spread around and the fact  
that Mulder himself had seen the odd larger  
looking track in the snow while out hunting for  
wood, the invasion caught him completely off  
guard.

He was roasting some venison strips for  
tomorrow's breakfast when a sound almost too  
faint to register had him turning his head toward  
the place where Scully had butchered the deer.  
They were barely visible against the snow. He  
only saw them because the moon cast a bright blue  
light across the scene and for a split second he  
just stood there staring blankly at three fully  
grown wolves nosing into the blocks of deer fat  
Scully had placed in the snow to freeze.

The six member wolf pack had discovered the blood  
trail early that afternoon. They had arrived  
outside the camp barely an hour after Scully had  
and circled cautiously the entire time the two  
humans had butchered the dead ungulate. They  
were nervous and had no plans to attack the  
humans. They recognized fellow predators and were  
not hungry enough to hunt meat eaters when the  
deer were still fat and plentiful and rabbits  
easy to catch. Later in the season they might  
have been a potential hazard, but not today.

But all that blood.

That was just too irresistible to resist. The  
blood and the fat and the offal had swiftly  
overcome any lingering caution and the pack had  
spent two hours circling carefully, slowly  
spiraling closer and closer to their objective.  
Once Scully had left and Mulder had settled more  
or less into an unmoving lump near the fire, the  
pack closed in. Their big hairy feet cushioning  
the depth of their feet in the snow and muffling  
the noise.

Mulder reached for his gun slowly, carefully  
lifting it to aim at the head of the wolf nearest  
him. At the last moment, just before he pulled  
the trigger, it turned to look at him. The  
intelligence, the lack of menace, the simple  
dignity of the animal almost brought him to his  
knees. He couldn't kill it. He just couldn't. Not  
because it was an endangered species, but because  
this animal deserved to live. Scully...

His mind paused. Then he closed his eyes in  
sadness. Scully deserved to live too.

The gunshot echoed obscenely in the night air.  
The second cracked explosively a split second  
later. A thump from the inside of the lean-to and  
he realized that more wolves had been inside the  
structure, probably sniffing after the hide. The  
back end of the structure collapsed inwards and  
two terrified wolves were suddenly barreling  
toward him. The third bullet took the lead wolf  
in the throat. The wolf behind stumbled over the  
body of the first and Mulder heard a yelp as it  
somersaulted headfirst into the snow. Mulder  
snapped off a fourth shot which broke the  
animal's shoulder. A fifth bullet finished it  
off.

It was over before Scully finished getting her  
boots on.

She found him sitting dazedly beside the fire, a  
shattered expression on his face. Stepping up  
cautiously beside him, she took in the fallen  
bodies and quietly holstered her weapon. Then she  
stood patiently and waited silently for him to  
speak. Finally he turned his head toward her.

"I killed them, Scully."

The pain in his voice was enough to break her  
heart. This was a man who could hunt down serial  
killers without shedding a tear, but someway,  
somehow, he still found the strength to let his  
heart bleed for the deaths of these animals. But  
then , she thought, the wolves deserved that  
honor. Monsters like Corman did not.

"They were beautiful Scully. And I killed them. "

He kept staring at the gun in his hands. Was he  
staring at the weapon...or at his hands? Taking  
the gun from him, she carefully wrapped her own  
around them, telling him as plainly as she knew  
how that he wasn't a monster. Then she leaned  
forward and wrapped her arms around him. She  
wondered briefly if she would have felt his  
bitter regret if she had been the one to fire the  
fatal shots. She suspected not. But while that  
fact probably made her the better soldier, the  
better survivor...she rather thought it made him  
the better human being.

The one thing that the man who wanted to believe  
everything, would never believe.

So she would believe it for him.

She pulled back until she could see his face. His  
eyes were dry, but the expression in them was  
haunted. Somehow, she knew that if it had  
only been his own survival at stake, that Mulder  
would not have pulled the trigger. It was a facet  
of his personality that generally scared her more  
than all the mutants in the universe. She said  
the only thing that seemed appropriate.

"Thank-you."

Bringing his hands up, she turned her cheek into  
his palms briefly, then stood up and walked  
toward the animals on the ground. The nearest  
wolves were definitely dead. There was another  
near the place where she had buried the chunks  
of tallow and the fourth was a dark lump several  
feet from the edge of the encampment. Mulder's  
lean-to was decimated and she sighed regretfully  
for all of that hard work wasted. Mulder built up  
the fire for warmth and light while Scully made a  
brief trip back to the main camp to add more wood  
to their primary fire. She had only taken the  
time to pull on the flannel shirt. Her pants were  
more or less dry and she pulled them on  
gratefully.

By the time she made it back to the site, Mulder  
had dragged all four carcasses over to the tree  
and was in the process of stringing one of the  
wolves up. Both of them were too exhausted for  
this so Scully suggested that they simply gut  
and skin the wolves and leave everything else  
until the morning. Mulder just nodded in weary  
agreement.

Perhaps because the carcasses were still warm or  
maybe it was simple practice, but the process  
went swiftly. Mulder hauled the offal as far as  
he could into the woods before he started  
freezing and dumped it. Neither agent relished  
the thought of wolf heart or liver and in their  
inexperience, thought they had more than enough  
meat to be choosy.

The only difference Scully made when skinning the  
wolves was the fact that she didn't slit the  
animal down the middle as she had with the deer.  
The effect, after pulling the skin down the  
carcass was that of a tube, skin on the outside,  
fur on the inside with pieces at the top and  
bottom where the legs used to be. All in all, the  
hide resembled a gory dog sweater turned inside  
out.

The agents lugged all of the hides back to the  
car and loaded them into the back seat of the  
vehicle. The heads of all five animals went in  
the front. When Mulder asked why she was saving  
them, Scully just muttered that they needed the  
brains for the hides and left it at that. They  
took the time to hang the wolf carcasses although  
Scully suspected they would have to be near  
starvation before she would ever get Mulder to  
eat the meat. She wasn't exactly wild about the  
idea herself.

Finally, they made their way wearily back to  
camp, wanting nothing more than to sleep for the  
next three days. Too tired to care about what  
they were and were not wearing, both hurriedly  
rinsed the blood from skin and fabric. There  
wasn't enough water to do a great job with the  
clothes and both agents knew the fabric would be  
stiff with it the next morning, but considering  
how wet and icky they were going to get working  
the hides, it did not really matter.

Mulder was asleep by the time Scully crawled into  
the burrow and snuggled down beside him. She had  
a brief thought that two bodies were definitely  
a hell of a lot warmer than one. Then his arm  
snaked around her waist and five seconds later  
she was dead to the world.

****************************************************

They were not up with the birds, but it still  
felt too damn early. Scully started to stretch,  
contemplating screaming and settled for a low  
moan of agony.

"Sore?"

She forced open one eye, saw nothing but burrow  
wall and closed it again. It was not worth the  
agony of turning her head in order to make eye  
contact.

"Just shoot me, Mulder. "

"Can't. I'd have to move for that."

"Surviving this shit is going to kill us."

"As long as I die warm, I'll die happy."

Creaking and groaning the agents contemplated the  
fact that their clothing was stretched out by the  
fire pit. The absurdity struck them both as they  
peered through the burrow entrance at the  
clothing not ten feet away yet neither agent  
willing to be the first one to brave the morning  
chill. Finally, the demands of her bladder being  
too great to ignore, Scully made a mad dash for  
her pants only to yell as she hauled freezing  
fabric up over her rapidly chilling butt and made  
a run for the latrine.

Warned by his partner's yelps, Mulder chose to  
build the fire back up and preheat his jeans  
first before pulling them on. Swiftly donning his  
gaiters, he made his own run for the latrine. The  
warmth in the jeans was long gone by the time he  
made it back to the fire and he was caught  
between wishing it was warmer and the knowledge  
that if it got above freezing they would not only  
risk their newly acquired food supply but their  
burrow might get uncomfortably damp. There was  
also no getting around the fact that at only a  
few degrees below freezing, snow tended to melt  
on the jeans instead of brush off.

He shivered convulsively and threw more wood on  
the fire. It was damn cold! Despite the regrets  
he had about killing the wolves, the fact that he  
might soon have warm footgear was an increasingly  
cheerful prospect. He was getting really tired of  
damp socks, painfully numb toes and freezing one  
half of his body while he roasted the other by  
the fire.

Scully rapidly dressed in her double layer of  
clothing and newly repaired snowshoes. She eyed  
him thoughtfully for a moment.

"Any chance you could get the hood off the car?"

Assuming rightly that this had something to do  
with the hides, Mulder thought about the contents  
he had dumped from the toolbox and then shrugged.

"Probably."

Scully grimaced. "I'll go get more firewood.  
We're going to need a fair amount and ..." Her  
eyes drifted to the clear sky and she chewed on  
her bottom lip worriedly."I think it's about to  
get a lot colder."

Three hours later there was a respectable pile of  
firewood in both camps and Mulder had not only  
managed to remove the car hood, but he had also  
managed to repair the damage to the lean-to. It  
had looked worse than it was and he chose to look  
at it as a positive event. The structure had  
obviously needed more work to support any  
sort of banking snow load. He took the chance to  
add extra poles and cross-ties before layering  
the pine boughs back on top. After a short break  
to down copious amounts of water and munch on  
roasted deer, Scully gathered pine boughs while  
Mulder finished closing in the sides of the lean-  
to. It wasn't precisely warm, but it blocked the  
wind and it would protect them from both wind and  
snow while they worked. That alone would make  
working the skins ten times easier.

It was already mid-afternoon and Scully was  
giving the sky frustrated looks. She had hoped to  
get to work on the skins today, but it was  
obvious that it would have to wait. Instead,  
she hauled the toolbox down to the worksite and  
used it to boil the lower legs of the deer. She  
had already removed the tendons - what would  
eventually become sinew - and now she was after  
the hooves and bones.

After about 15 minutes she was able to pop the  
hooves off the lower leg bones with a screw  
driver and a sharp twist. By the time she was  
finished, the lower leg bones had been converted  
into hide scrapers, the smaller sharp bones near  
the hoof had been put aside for needles and the  
hooves were boiling gently. It would take several  
hours, but eventually she would be able to scrape  
out a gooey substance called neatsfoot oil which  
they could use to soften and protect their  
leather articles. The hooves themselves would dry  
into a three sided triangle that when tied  
together would chime musically against each  
other. On the move, they would serve the same  
purpose as bear bells. Future hooves could be  
boiled down for glue.

While she was making tools, Mulder tried to  
figure out how to set up the hood so that it  
would do what they needed it to do. He spent  
almost an hour with the hammer bashing sides of  
the hood up on all four sides. It wasn't even and  
the hood was twisted from the crash, but he  
thought it would do. Using a combination of rocks  
and logs he managed to get the thing more or less  
solidly braced horizontally a good two feet above  
the ground. He kept having to stop and run back  
to the fire to thaw out his hands and feet. By  
the time Scully was done, he was drying his socks  
and roasting several chunks of venison for  
dinner.

She sat down next to him, propped up her own feet  
to dry and stared at him pensively.

"Why do I feel like we didn't get anything done  
today?"

"Because no matter how much wood you gathered-  
you're just going to have to do it again in  
another couple of days."

She sighed,"How depressingly true."

By uniform accord they both decided to make it an  
early night. The first part of the tanning  
process would be messy, wet and time intensive.  
It was not something she wanted to do at night  
and their clothing made it impractical. They were  
also both still excruciatingly sore and tired  
from the day before. Scully stretched and ambled  
back to the camp. She had something else she  
wanted to do.

She found Mulder staring into the cleaned and  
returned toolbox with a bemused expression on his  
face.

"Pine needles and pine bark, Mulder."

He nodded, then shook his head in confusion.

"For my hair, Mulder. Pine oil is an antiseptic  
as well as an astringent. I'm hoping I can get  
some of this blood and grease out of my hair and  
off my skin. At the very least I'll smell a  
little better."

"Is that a hint Agent Scully?"

She eyed his wry expression with amusement,"I  
don't know. I haven't been able to smell anything  
but my own hair since yesterday." She studied his  
short cut with outright envy. Until she had  
proper headgear she was leaving her hair the  
length it was, but the minute she had a fur hat,  
she was seriously considering digging out the  
hunting knife and lopping it all off. Hygiene vs.  
cold. Damn.

She had no idea what long term use of the pine  
water would do to her skin...there were trace  
elements of turpentine in the bark after all. But  
they needed to get the bacteria off their skins  
somehow or they risked rashes and infections.

Moving to the far side of the fire where the  
rinse water wouldn't turn the ground where they  
were walking to slush, Scully tested the  
temperature of the water and stripped off both  
shirts so they wouldn't get wet. Between two days  
of sleeping in their underwear and swapping  
clothing back and forth, both agents were  
rapidly starting to lose a good part of their body  
consciousness. Despite his choices in swimwear,  
Mulder was surprisingly shy about exposing his  
body at other times.

At least around other people.

Any shyness he might have directed at her had  
rapidly disappeared that first year, Scully  
thought wryly. So the fact that she had nothing  
on above her waist except her bra was not the  
first thought going through her head when she  
felt Mulder take the cup from her hand as she  
tried to pour the liquid onto her hair without  
getting it into her eyes.

Cupping his hand under her forehead, he gently  
poured the water into her hair, the palm of his  
hand efficiently capturing much of it and  
bringing it back to her hair before it was lost.  
She hummed in pleasure and he worked his fingers  
gently through her hair, untangling knots and  
massaging the scalp. Scully suddenly remembered  
why she liked to go to the expensive hair salons.  
The ones where they spent a good amount of time  
just working the lather into your hair. Because  
it felt so damn good. Without soap, she didn't  
get a squeaky clean, but the pine oils seemed to  
break down much of the grease and by alternately  
scrubbing her head with the pine bark tea and  
rubbing her hair with the flannel shirt, Mulder  
seemed to get most of it feeling clean. The  
tingling of her scalp from the pine extracts just  
added to the feeling.

Mulder moved from her hair to her back and she  
was about to take the cloth back from him with  
thanks when she heard his breath hiss suddenly in  
concern.

"Jesus Scully, have you had this thing off at  
all?"

His hands were suddenly undoing the clasp of her  
bra and her eyes shot open in startlement, but he  
was only running his fingers lightly over the  
skin that had been covered by the fabric.

"It looks like you've got a rash developing."

She winced. She had been hoping it was just  
friction burns. She would definitely have to make  
sure she rinsed it out everyday. Frowning  
suddenly, she twisted around to look Mulder in  
the eye. He handed her the wash flannel with one  
hand and grabbed her sweater off the rack with  
the other. She pulled it on, dropping the bra  
into her hand.

"I didn't see any of your underwear drying by the  
fire."

He lifted his hand solemnly, "I did it while you  
were hunting Bambi. I swear. "

He groaned at her suspicious look, "Jeez Scully.  
That's not a place a guy wants to get a rash  
okay. Been there, done that. It ain't fun. So I  
swear, I'm wearing slightly smoky but relatively  
clean underwear."

At his aggrieved look Scully started to snicker,  
"You were saying about dignity, Mulder?"

His answering smile was rueful.

Picking up the cup she gestured for him to sit on  
something so she could reach his hair. Because of  
the length it didn't take more than a couple of  
cups to have it feeling relatively clean.  
Considering the amount of pine needle tea left in  
the toolbox she decided to try washing her  
underwear in it to see if it got the fabric any  
cleaner. Mulder smirked but behaved himself when  
she ordered him to turn around so she could slip  
out of the other half of her underwear and back  
into her pants. Then, washing them as best she  
could she hung them by the fire and prayed the  
heat from the fire wouldn't melt anything.

Despite the fact that they had only been up for a  
little over eight hours, neither agent felt any  
great desire to stay awake once the sun went  
down. It was cold, they were sore and once the  
burrow warmed up, they both passed out.  
Surprisingly, even Mulder slept straight through  
until the next morning.

The next day dawned bright and clear, colder than  
the previous two, but not as cold as Scully had  
feared it would be. She had given the sky another  
of those thoughtful frowns that were beginning to  
bug her partner and tried once more to see if the  
car radio could pick up anything but static.  
Unfortunately, some of Mulder's bashing around  
the previous day must have damaged something  
because she couldn't even get it to turn on.  
Either that or the battery was frozen.

While she was mucking around with the radio,  
Mulder was scooping armfuls of snow into the car  
hood which now rested over a merrily blazing  
fire. It wasn't long before there was a  
respectable amount of warm-although not boiling-  
water in an even layer. She threw in copious  
amounts of pine needles and the inner bark of the  
tree hoping that it might take care of any  
potential lice or flea infestations in the fur  
and and while they waited for that to cook, the  
two agents retrieved the frozen hides from the  
car. They laid the hides into the water and let  
the skin thaw and soak briefly while they  
searched for a solid log they could drag back to  
camp to use for a fleshing beam.

They finally located a nice solid pine tree that  
had snapped off in some previous storm. The log  
was solid, but not rotted and after several  
frustrating minutes they were able to kick it  
loose from the stump it was still partially  
attached too. Scully scrubbed and hung the wolf  
hides while Mulder spent the better part of an  
hour twisting and hacking off tree branches.  
Then, with no real other way to secure it for  
use, they lashed it between two trees at waist  
height. Using the end of a crowbar that had  
made up part of the contents of the toolbox,  
Scully skinned the bark from the tree while  
Mulder went off for more wood.

Knowing that they were going to get soaked, the  
agents built two relatively large, heat-producing  
campfires just in front of each tree the newly  
smoothed log was secured to. Standing between the  
two fires, the agents found they were relatively  
comfortable, although one side of their bodies  
did tend to get uncomfortably hot after a while.

The wet hides steamed in the winter air when they  
threw them over the fleshing beam and the two  
agents spent the next three miserable hours  
scraping the fat and inner membrane from the  
hides. Dull edges were better than sharp ones for  
this job because of the fear of slicing the hide  
and they found that Scully's hide scrapers worked  
extremely well. By the end of it, they were wet,  
cold, sticky, bloody and painfully cramped in  
hand, shoulder and back...and they still had  
three steps to go.

The fleshed hides were quickly rinsed, wrung out  
and hung near the fire to keep them thawed.  
Mulder had somehow thought that oak bark was  
involved in the tanning process. Scully just  
smiled and said that this way was easier.  
Cracking open the wolf skulls she dumped each  
brain into the toolbox and added about five cups  
of water. Once the brains were thawed, she  
mashed and whipped until she had a thick red  
slurry. She left it near enough to the fire to  
keep it warm without cooking it and went back to  
check on the pelts.

Two of the pelts were partially dry and  
stiffening. Taking them down they laid them on  
the hood and started smoothing the brain slurry  
onto the skin of the pelt with their hands.  
Getting it onto the fur side of the pelt would  
not be necessary. Within minutes, the  
combination of brain mixture and warmth had  
started to soften the skin of the hide in places.  
When each hide was completely coated, they rolled  
each pelt it on a warm spot on the hood to let  
the mixture soak.

For the next hour, they let the hides soak. While  
waiting, they found a ten foot length solid  
length of 3 inch diameter maple and lashed it to  
two trees about three feet from the ground. At  
the one hour mark, they added another coat of  
brain slurry and spent another hour stripping the  
bark from the lashed log that was about to become  
their softening beam.

When each pelt has soaked for at least two hours,  
they each took one over to the maple log and  
stood with a leg on either side of the beam.  
Then, holding an end of the pelt in each hand ,  
and bearing down with their weight and strength  
they rubbed and pulled the skin back and forth  
across the narrow tree. As they pulled and  
tugged, the friction started to dry the skin,  
while the pulling and stretching as well as the  
rubbing began to soften the leather. They kept it  
up until the hide was completely soft and dry.

It was several hours after dark before they  
were finished all four wolf pelts and the deer  
hide. Scully had taken advantage of the hood bath  
to boil one set of clothes clean. Mulder had  
found a t-shirt stuffed into the blue duffel and  
changing into that, they cleaned and hung  
Scully's second set of clothes and Mulder's  
jeans. By the time they were done taking a hasty  
sponge bath and racing back to the burrow as  
quickly as exhausted muscles allowed, Scully  
could not decide which she wanted more - 24  
hours of sleep or 50mg of Demerol.

She was just tucking herself into the curve of  
her partner's body when she remembered that she  
still had to check the rabbit traps she had set.  
Groaning softly, she squirmed for a few minutes  
to get comfortable and then surrendered to  
unconsciousness. Neither woke until just before  
dawn the next morning.

Mulder groaned as he tried to unglue heavy  
eyelids, " God Scully, this can't be normal."

A mumbled muffle from somewhere below his chin  
sounded vaguely interrogative.

"This sleeping we're doing. Is it healthy?"

It took her so long to answer he was starting to  
get worried. Then she groaned and stretched  
kinked muscles and agonized shoulders. "S'normal  
Mulder. We're burning too much energy walking  
around in the cold and snow. The system is trying  
to conserve energy. We need to eat more. Up the  
fat content."

Mulder snorted. "Bet that's the first time you've  
said that in a while."

She contemplated slugging him and then decided it  
would hurt too much.

"How much longer is this going to take anyway?"

Scully shrugged, then began hauling herself in  
the general direction of the burrow door. "We  
should get most of it done today and tomorrow if  
all goes well."

It took the better part of the morning to  
check and reset her snares. She was amazed to  
discover that she had actually caught a rabbit in  
one of them. She was even more amazed that the  
damn thing had worked the way it was supposed to,  
the young tree snapping upright when the snare  
released, hauling the bunny into the air and away  
from prowling predators.

By the time she stumbled back into camp, her  
knuckle-scraped and battered looking partner was  
proudly laying out five completely smoked and  
finished hides.

Building a tripod of three stout poles and some  
rope, he had sewn the leg holes in the wolf pelts  
closed with some strips of fabric and a couple of  
small holes punched in the fur. Then, tying a  
rope around the neck end of the hide he had hung  
the furry tube skin side in from the tripod.  
Sacrificing Corman's t-shirt, he attached the  
neck of the t-shirt to the open end of the pelt  
tube with more holes and rough ties.

He had dug under the coals of one of their fires  
from the night before. The heat had thawed the  
ground several inches down and he was able to  
clear a pit almost a foot square and a foot deep.  
Burning a hot fire down to coals, placed the  
tripod to position the fur over the hot embers.  
Then he dropped several punky pieces of oak onto  
the coals and, stretching the end of the t-shirt  
wide, had pinned the bottom edge of the shirt to  
the ground with bone pegs. Thus sealed in, the  
smoke had no option but to fill the t-shirt, then  
the pelt.

Each pelt smoked for about 30 minutes. He was  
just wrapping the deer hide around the tripod  
tipi style when his partner returned. In no time  
at all, the rabbit was skinned and roasting for  
lunch. By the time the deer hide was finished,  
Scully had fleshed and cleaned the rabbit fur but  
was leaving the tanning for another day.

A large portion of their extra wood had been  
piled on either side of the open front of the  
lean-to. Slanting inward and toward the center  
the two piles gave the appearance of box flaps  
closing inward. When they built a small fire in  
the middle of the open front, they reflected some  
of the heat inward into the structure. Sticks  
lashed perpendicularly to two logs with a piece  
of carpet laid over top formed a low table.

For the rest of the afternoon Scully measured  
their feet and set about forming and then  
cutting out a pattern for knee high laced  
moccasin boots from the last few pieces of carpet  
torn from the car. Roughly sewing the fabric  
boots together with narrow fabric strips the  
agents tried them on several times as she made  
minor adjustments here and there. Scully was  
focused on tacking the last attempt together when  
she looked up to find Mulder staring at her  
curiously.

"What?"

He smiled and shook his head. "I can't believe  
you know all this stuff."

She held up the cloth boot and stared at it  
critically. "There's a wilderness survival group  
that holds classes. I dropped in on a few last  
year. I've actually made a pair of these  
before." She shoved the boot in his direction,  
"That should fit."

Mulder pulled on the boot and then nodded. In  
comfortable silence, the two agents picked apart  
the rough seams of their pattern pieces. The  
pelts tubes had already been sliced open and  
spread on the table, skin side up, the fur snow-  
washed clean. Adding a generous seam and fur  
allowance, the agents carefully wielded newly  
sharpened knives and, as the light fell, cut  
out the pieces to their new boots.

Using hammer and screwdriver, Scully punched  
holes in the leather pieces since she was  
familiar with the process, while Mulder cut  
a piece of leather from the newly smoked deer  
hide and painstakingly sliced lengths of  
leather lace. Finally, all that was left  
was to put it all together. Screw drivers and  
tiny pieces of bone were used to laboriously  
push lace through holes and slowly, by the  
light of a nearly full moon and flickering  
firelight, the boots took shape.

The silver gray fur was turned to the inside for  
warmth and the leather side of the wolf pelts  
showed as a multi-colored mix of reddish brown and  
both pairs of boots, when pulled on, reached to  
the knee. Like those worn by trappers and  
frontiersman over one hundred years ago, these  
boots laced up the front from ankle to knee  
giving the wearer a fair amount of control over  
the tightness and fit of the boot. The boots  
themselves had been designed to fit just a bit  
loose - and they would stretch even further. The  
added ease would allow the agents to add a set of  
rabbit fur socks once they caught enough of the  
critters.

Mulder sighed in sybaritic delight as he tied off  
the laces and slowly held up one foot to admire  
his new outerwear.

"The latest style in survival wear, Scully. Warm  
toes."

The lean-to was surprisingly warm enough that  
the top layer of snow inside was starting to get  
slushy. The agents decided to keep their original  
footwear to wear when skinning or working in the  
lean-to. The fire would keep their feet from  
freezing and the last thing they wanted was to  
start getting the new boots soaked with blood and  
other bodily fluids.

Exhausted, but surprisingly not as bruised as the  
evening before, the agents decided to end on a  
high note. Bundling deer hide, rabbit fur and  
wolf pelt scraps into the car, they fell into a  
relaxed rhythm as they worked through the  
evening chores, bath and laundry, then went to  
sleep.

The next morning came as a surprise. Six inches  
of new snow had already fallen and more was  
coming down gently. It seemed logical to move  
breakfast to the lean-to and as the agents sat  
sipping hot tea made from the soft inner bark of  
a pine tree and roasted strips of venison. Scully  
finally put her fears into words.

"I don't think we're in Minnesota, Mulder."

Her partner studied her silently, neither  
agreeing nor disagreeing. He was simply  
calculating the effect of that fact on any rescue  
attempts should she be right. More specifically,  
the fact that they might be several miles and  
maybe more than one state away from the official  
search grid. He tilted his head inquiringly.

Scully jerked her chin in the direction of the  
snow falling outside the lean-to.

"The arctic front should have been here by now.  
It's been too warm, too long. I think we're on  
our own here, Mulder."

Her words should have sounded ominous. Instead,  
they came out as a simple statement of fact.  
Scully's eyes gleamed with reflected firelight as  
she watched the snow swirling outside.

Sheltered from the wind and warmed by the fire,  
the interior of the structure glowed in soft  
shades of orange and umber browns while outside  
was painted in muffled shades of gray and blue.  
It should have been depressing, the warmer  
temperatures and lower pressure system which had  
arrived with the snow gave the air a heavy  
quality that seemed to absorb sound, isolating  
them from the rest of the world.

It was ...relaxing.

Cozy.

"What's the Mona Lisa smile for, Scully?"

She leaned back. Mulder had slanted several  
sticks back against one of the support posts  
before placing the bench log in front. The effect  
was that of a slightly reclining high back chair.  
Under the circumstances, pure luxury.

"Just enjoying the moment."

"I think that's against the rules."

She snorted softly, "Since when do you worry  
about rules?"

"Well...no one's shooting at us. That's a plus."

The corners of her lips turned upward and Mulder  
watched fascinated as he realized that she was  
just as composed, just as carefree as she would  
have been sitting beside him in their basement  
office in DC. Maybe more so.

She really was not worried.

Was he worried?

Mulder's thoughts turned inwards with a touch of  
surprise as he felt around for the familiar  
tension and could not find it. There was mild  
apprehension regarding Scully's going out to  
checks the traps alone, but it was nothing more  
than the normal apprehension he lived with  
everyday regarding her safety. It would appear  
that his subconscious filed potential bear  
attacks under the same category as alien  
abductions, visits by Consortium informants and  
earthquakes in LA.

Possible. Deadly.

And just something that had to be lived with.

Go figure.

He supposed that when you actually thought about  
it, they moved through an everyday world fraught  
with danger. They rode buses, drove cars, crossed  
busy streets, took planes. They ate hamburger  
they didn't cook, did business in banks that  
could be robbed, and walked on streets populated  
by HIV positive junkies. Everyday, they faced the  
possibility that they could be robbed, raped,  
mugged or murdered simply by being in the wrong  
place at the wrong time.

And that was just for the ordinary, non-X-Files  
citizen of the urban jungle.

Hell, the possibility of falling down a cliff was  
no more or less than the possibility of losing  
your balance and falling down a flight of stairs.  
Considering the heels women wore, he rather  
thought the possibility of taking a header off  
concrete steps was more plausible. The only  
difference was the distance to medical attention  
if the injury was serious.

The fears were known and familiar.

They faced their everyday urban dangers without  
really seeing them. They were known variables in  
the constant test of survival called modern  
living. Given the proper knowledge, this back-  
country detour of theirs was no different. It  
just had a different face.

And really, if he thumbed through a mental list  
of everything that had tried to stab, bite,  
break, shoot, squash, tear, rend, infect, explode  
or otherwise adversely affect their health and  
well-being, most of those villains had walked on  
two legs not four. Cutting down their potential  
dangers to just freezing to death, starving to  
death, avalanche, wolves and bears...well, that  
actually improved the odds.

Holy shit.

Not to mention that the bear would only attack if  
he was hungry or Mulder threatened him. There  
were rules of a sort and ultimately, all that  
would happen was that he would be dead. Which was  
reassuring in a warped sort of way.

Some of their enemies would do them for fun.

And death was only one option.

Movement caught his attention and he watched  
silently as his partner spread out the deer hide  
and considered it carefully. Although they had  
planned on making a jacket large enough to fit  
either of them, realistically, that was not the  
best choice. By making the first jacket Scully  
sized they had hide left over for other things.

Like boot laces.

Mulder put down his tea and contemplated the  
items at his feet. Before brain-tanning the deer  
hide, the agents had sliced off a good length of  
the raw hide and cut it into strips and left them  
fleshed, but untreated. Now, while Scully worked  
over her jacket, Mulder contemplated his own  
project.

Several four foot lengths of green maple sapling  
about one inch in diameter had been simmering in  
the hood bath for the past couple of hours. He  
had only been able to submerge half of each  
length, but that was fine. Mulder supposed there  
were other ways to do this, but Scully claimed  
she had not taken that class yet, so he would  
have to try this and see. It seemed logical.

The soaking had left the wood slightly pliable,  
and Mulder slowly worked at the wood, careful not  
to apply too much strength too quickly. Working  
four lengths concurrently, he was able to change  
off as each length dried and became harder to  
work. When that happened, he put it back in the  
water to simmer some more and went on to the next  
one. By early afternoon, as Scully was starting  
to cut leather, he had managed to work an extreme  
hooked curve into the top of four lengths of  
maple. One had snapped under too much pressure  
and not enough soaking, forcing him to start over  
with another length, but now they were ready.

Mulder had chose to curve the thinner ends of the  
wood lengths. The first thing he did was overlap  
two curved ends by about one foot. He secured the  
ends tightly with wire, and then, using sticks as  
temporary cross pieces, he began to bent the seven  
foot length into the shape of a bear paw  
snowshoe. By the time dusk rolled around, two  
tear drop shapes had taken form and were resting  
by the fire to dry and he was working on one half  
of a larger pair. By the time Scully had finished  
cutting out the pieces of her jacket, the fourth  
snowshoe form was completed.

They slept just long enough to see the sunrise  
and dove right back into work. The leg tendons  
of the deer had dried, and Scully bashed them  
with the edge of a large wrench until they  
separated. Separating several threads she soaked  
them until they softened, rolled them slightly  
against her thigh to strengthen them and then poked  
the stiffened end through the holes she had  
already punched through the leather with a nail  
and began sewing her jacket together. By keeping  
the sinew moist, it stayed pliable and the dry  
hardened tip negated the need for a needle. It  
was slow, frustrating work, but the jacket began  
to come together.

Meanwhile, Mulder had removed all of the  
temporary cross pieces, leaving the forms attached  
at the three places where the ends met. He  
debated removing the wire as well, then decided  
it did not matter and would probably make his job  
easier. The wood itself was only the form. The  
skeleton that would give the snowshoes their  
shape. The material that he hoped would give them  
their strength was soaking in a warm bath of  
water and turning white. Picking up one of the  
rawhide strips, he tied one end near the crossed  
tail pieces and started wrapping the form  
tightly, the same way he would have wrapped the  
blade of a hockey stick or handle of a bat. He  
was amazed by the amount of stretch in the hide  
and found himself using a fair amount of the  
strength in his upper arms to keep the hide as  
tight as possible. Each strip was about an inch  
wide, and he allowed a generous overlap.

Rather than trying to tied off each strip when he  
ran out of hide, he simply laid the end of the  
next strip along the form when he was down to  
about five inches of lace left. He wrapped the  
old lace tightly, covering the first two or three  
inches of the new lace and securing it to the  
form tightly. Then, crossing the old end over the  
new so that it would hold, he held the last two  
inches of the old strip against the form and  
starting wrapping with the new. Except for a  
small bulge, the joining was almost invisible.

His stack of rawhide was three-quarters gone by  
the time he finished wrapping the second  
snowshoe, but he figured he'd have enough to  
finished the webbing. He had started with  
Scully's snowshoes first since there had always  
been a possibility he would only have enough for  
one pair. Since she had the jacket and thus would  
be doing all the woods tromping, it made sense to  
outfit her first.

Setting the snowshoes by the fire to dry, Mulder  
wandered over to where his partner was working.  
The technique was fascinating, and after watching  
her for a few minutes, he began to get an idea.  
There was very little left of the wolf pelts, but  
maybe there would be just enough. Scully glanced  
over at him curiously as him a few times as he  
measured, cut and punched, but she did not ask.  
The sinew sewing trick took a bit to master,  
but he eventually got the hang of it. The look of  
astonishment and pleasure on her face when he  
presented her with a pair of wolf fur mittens to  
go with her boots was worth every strained thumb  
and sinew blister.

She finished her jacket that night. She had cut  
the hide to take advantage of the legs and  
shoulders already present in the deer's hide.  
There wouldn't have been enough room across the  
shoulders for Mulder, but it fit Scully  
surprisingly well, and the dropped shoulder  
pattern forced by the pattern gave her more than  
enough space around the arms. The upper legs of  
the deer formed the sleeves and the rear end  
became panels for the front. All in all she had  
managed to create a three-quarter length winter  
coat with a minimum of effort. Like the boots,  
the fur was turned in for warmth and the front  
edges of the jacket overlapped by a good margin.  
The whole thing was secured by a belt around the  
waist.

It didn't look half bad on her either, Mulder  
acknowledged.

The next few days fell into a predictable  
pattern. Scully set snares, brought back rabbits  
and hauled in firewood. Mulder skinned and tanned  
the rabbit fur while he worked on finishing  
Scully's snowshoes. By the third day, he was  
experimenting with smoking the meat strips and  
the snowshoes were ready.

Scully started expanding her traplines.

By the end of the second week, the temperature  
had dropped considerably. Mulder had made himself  
a pair of rabbit fur gloves and rabbit hoods for  
the both of them, but the wind and the cold made  
it impossible for him to venture outside of the  
lean-to to work. Scully was finding it necessary  
to venture further and further to find wood and  
after Mulder cobbled together a small sled using  
deer bones, sticks and wire, she started hauling  
wood back to camp on the return leg of her  
hunting trips. Mulder had wrapped the smooth  
synthetic leather from the backs of the car seats  
to the bottom and she found that the sled glided  
easily over the snow.

Frustrated by her inability to locate another  
deer, Scully started setting traps for larger  
predators. Using the wolf meat as bait, she  
managed to catch three marten and a fox. Mulder  
had almost fallen over laughing at the guilty  
look on her face when she brought the latter  
home. She was beginning to think they were going  
to have to piece his jacket together from the  
different pelts. She added another rabbit  
trapline in the hopes of catching enough rabbits  
that they could at least make some form of vest.

Then the damn deer ran into their camp and  
committed suicide.

She had taken more time than expected while  
collecting wood and it was getting dark. The  
last mile of the trail was so beaten down by  
use, that her snowshoes were not necessary so  
she had taken them off in the hopes that she  
might be able to move quietly enough to surprise  
something along the trail long enough to shoot  
it. She hadn't yet, but she figured she could  
always hope.

A light layer of snow had fallen over the trail,  
and her boots were almost noiseless as she moved  
easily up the trail. It was early dusk, and  
everything was beginning to be painted over in  
shades of blue and light gray. She was only a few  
minutes out of camp when she heard what sounded  
like a startled yell followed closely by the  
explosive crack of a handgun.

Hurtling up the path, Scully had her glove off  
and her automatic in her hand before she reached  
the edge of their camp. Hollering out her  
partner's name so he didn't shoot her by  
accident, Scully launched herself into the  
flattened circle of snow that signified their  
territory, scanning for everything from mothmen  
to grizzly bears.

"Scully!"

Her head swiveled and she found her partner  
crumpled in the snow about 150 feet away near  
the latrine. She started running. As he hauled  
himself to his knees, she noted absently that his  
jeans were around his knees but was more  
concerned with the gun in his hand.

He had a dazed expression on his face, but he was  
flapping his hand at her and gesturing beyond his  
body. She was just about to check her speed when  
he gasped out one word.

"Deer!"

Startled, she looked beyond him to find tracks in  
the snow. Her intent obvious as she suddenly  
leaned into the run, Mulder squawked and  
flattened and she hurtled his body and bounded  
after her partner's jacket. She was tearing her  
snowshoes off her back and desperately trying to  
figure out how she was going to find the damn  
beast in the dark when she almost feel over it.

Vividly recalling the multi-colored bruise the  
last "dead" deer gave her, she checked herself  
with almost comic haste and stood there heaving  
as she tried to catch her breath and figure out  
what to do next. A cautious poke with one of her  
snowshoes got her a tremendous heave of powerful  
back legs and she barely managed to throw herself  
out of the way. Growling, she finally said to  
hell with saving ammo and shot it in the head.

It didn't move after that.

Heading back to camp for the ropes, she holstered  
her pistol and swore when she realized that she  
had dropped her glove somewhere on the trail. She  
would have waited until morning to search for  
it, but she had dropped it the same time she  
dropped the four rabbits she was carrying and she  
didn't want to lose either of them. Padding  
through camp she found no sign of Mulder so she  
quickly loped back along the trail. Despite the  
lack of a moon, the edges of the trail showed a  
darker shade of gray and she found her rabbits  
within minutes. Luckily she stepped on her glove  
and she retrieved it with a sense of relief.

Back at camp there was still no sign of Mulder  
but the lean-to was glowing brightly. Considering  
the cold, he was probably down there getting warm  
and dry. From the looks of the trail, the  
deer had run right over him and he was probably  
soaked. At least she only had to haul this one  
down to the worksite. Grabbing the ropes from the  
car, she hurried back to the deer and got to  
work.

Whether it was all the upper body work she had  
been doing for the past three weeks or just the  
fact that she was a lot warmer and less tired  
than she had been last time, it didn't take  
her more than twenty minutes to get the deer  
down to the worksite. She found Mulder in the  
lean-to in the process of pulling his sweater  
back over his head. He gave her a wry smile when  
he saw her.

"I told you Scully. The Fates are determined to  
humiliate me."

She smiled gamely, but her worried eyes tracked  
the slow way he was moving and the short pained  
exhalations of breath as he lifted his arms to  
pull down the sweater.

"What happened?"

Mulder snorted,"You flushed him right to me.  
Unfortunately, I was occupied at the time. I  
heard him coming and had my gun out and was  
trying to haul my jeans up when the damn thing  
burst out of the trees right on top of me. I hit  
it in the chest and then it hit me. Damn thing  
knocked me flying. The rest you know."

Scully nodded absently as she listened. She was  
more concerned with his ribs. She ignored his  
half-hearted protests - uttered more because of  
the fact he didn't want her poking at his already  
painful bruises than the fact he didn't want  
help. Pulling his sweater up to his collarbone  
she was shocked at how prominent his ribs were.  
Avoiding his eyes she clenched her jaw and  
examined him for breakage. They got lucky. Just  
bruises.

Smoothing his turtleneck back down she studied  
his face sadly. The cold had been cruel to her  
partner. Despite staying close to the fires, the  
fat had melted from his body at an alarming  
rate. Neither of them were hungry anymore, their  
tastebuds sick to death of venison and rabbit.  
They would have paid in gold for spices of any  
kind. Even so, he had choked down the high fat  
cuts of meat she pushed on him.

It wasn't enough.

Over the years, her partner had started to fill  
out, the lanky length of his bones finally losing  
that unfinished boyish look as his body matured  
into early middle age. This recent loss of weight  
hadn't returned him to that earlier state. He did  
not look young, just gaunt. He had to be aching  
in every bone in his body and she felt him  
shivering longer and longer into the night as his  
body tried to warm itself. And Mulder, who  
complained about hangnails, never said a word.

She thought about the deer lying out in the snow.  
Leaning forward she wrapped her arms around her  
partner's waist and leaned against him, trying if  
only for a moment to share some of her warmth.  
She felt him rest his chin briefly on the top of  
her head, then he stepped back.

"Come on, Scully. We got work to do."

Setting two blazing fires on either side of the  
skinning trees, Scully stripped right down to  
skin, replacing only Corman's flannel shirt and  
jeans. After helping her to haul the deer into  
the air, Mulder retreated to the lean-to which  
now boasted a second fire. They were burning  
through wood unbelievably fast, but if it would  
see Mulder with warm clothing, Scully would  
gladly spend the time replacing it. The added  
warmth allowed Mulder to exchange turtleneck for  
t-shirt and as soon as Scully was done removing  
the hide, she simply jointed the meat and dragged  
it into the lean-to for Mulder to finish.

One end of the lean-to had been converted into a  
leather working space. The low table had been  
joined by rough shelves for tools and the ground  
had been covered in enough pine boughs that the  
damp from the floor no longer soaked through to  
Mulder's sneakers or the occasional careless  
knee. A length of wood served as a place to store  
their leather boots when they changed back into  
their old footgear to work. The finished hides  
were stacked in the car.

The other half of the lean-to had been converted  
into a meat smoker. Mulder had closed in the  
front of that half of the lean-to with sticks and  
pine boughs. In the center of this space he used  
fire and bone to dig a fire he started  
building racks. Each rack was nothing more than  
two long lengths of wood, crossed by smaller  
sticks placed about one inch apart. Each shelf  
rested on lengths of wood he had lashed  
horizontally to the front and back of the lean-  
to. The removable nature of the racks allowed him  
to work back to front, adding and removing racks  
as necessary.

He had created a stick and pine bough wall for  
the upper half of the smoker, the part with the  
racks. He had attached it to the back of the  
lean-to with loops of rope, and the hinges  
allowed him to swing it up against the back wall  
where another loop of rope would hold it against  
the roof. When down, he could secure it to the  
front wall and the edge of the bottom rack  
forming an almost solid wall between the racks  
and the rest of the lean-to. Another removable  
section of pine bough wall was made for the lower  
section of the wall below the racks, but because  
he needed easy access to the fire, this simply  
lifted in and out of place.

Mulder used one rack as an impromptu table and  
spent the next couple of hours slicing the joints  
of meat into thin slices suitable for smoking. He  
filled rack after rack with layers of meat, then  
when they were full, kept slicing and piling the  
meat on the last rack. He would cart it out to  
the trunk of the car when he was done. Most of  
the frozen meat from the first deer had already  
been smoked and was stored in one of four boxes  
he had made using sticks of wood and rabbit  
rawhide lashings. Three were full of the  
shriveled strips of meat that they would need on  
their trip out of the woods.

The difference in weight alone dictated smoking  
rather than freezing as the preservative of  
choice. The fourth box was half full of frozen  
tallow. If they were lucky, the tallow from this  
second deer would just fill the rest of the empty  
space. A fifth box rested in the corner and a  
sixth was in a state of partial construction.  
Mulder figured that he could fit the two of them  
into the front seat of the car. After that, they  
were going to have to start hanging them from  
trees.

Mulder dumped the last of the excess meat into a  
box he used for carrying raw meat. The fire  
beneath the racks was almost all coals, and the  
punky maple wood he added quickly started pushing  
out billows of blue-white smoke. He dropped both  
doors into place, sealing the smoke chamber from  
the rest of the lean-to. He had made a small hole  
at the top of the end wall in the sealed section,  
and while smoke did seep into the workspace,  
seated near the floor as they generally were, it  
wasn't much of a problem.

He was about to head out to the car with the meat  
box when he realized that almost an hour had  
passed since his partner had handed him the last  
joint of meat. He stepped outside expecting to  
see an immaculate kill site, with tallow already  
stored in the car and bones neatly stacked  
waiting to be boiled clean for some future use.  
What he saw was a wet and bedraggled figure  
laboriously scraping the last of the fat and  
membrane from the deer hide. Two new fires had  
been kindled near the fleshing beam and even by  
their unsteady light he could see the  
determination on her face.

He suddenly found it hard to swallow.

He also had a feeling they were working through  
the night.

She gave him a tired smile when he gathered up  
the chunks of frozen tallow and added them to his  
load. He made a very rapid trip to the car where  
the tallow was dumped in its box and the meat  
was hurriedly spread out in layers in the trunk.  
He didn't bother to pack the snow tightly. The  
meat would only be there long enough for the  
first batch of smoked meat to finish and then he  
would be digging it out again. It wouldn't be in  
the trunk longer than a week.

He raced back to the lean-to to warm up,  
then finished the clean-up chores. He stacked  
bones, washed and hung the ropes inside where  
they could dry and finally, he sorted through  
the offal. Large intestines and stomach were  
quickly emptied and washed. He carefully peeled  
away and washed the sac around the heart, while  
the heart, liver and kidneys were put aside to  
freeze.

Scully was just rinsing the hide as he finished  
and Mulder assumed that would be it for the  
night. Scully had other ideas. She dug out the  
toolbox and started mashing brains. After they  
brained the hide and left it to soak they used  
the hour to empty and clean the hood and to move  
the fires from the fleshing beam to the softening  
and working beam. They also cleaned the hide  
scrapers and tidied up and burned as much of the  
gore and icky bits as possible. When they brained  
the hide a second time, they then were left with  
a good one to two hour wait.

They retreated to the lean-to.

He expected it, but Mulder was still mildly  
shocked when he looked at his watch and  
discovered that it was only nine o'clock. The  
relatively early evenings caused by sundown had  
thrown their internal time senses completely off.  
As the lean-to had become more and more habitable  
and as they had acquired the resources to start  
projects, they had been spending more time at the  
worksite. Partly this was due to logistics, but  
the simple fact was, that as they acclimated to  
their new physical routine, their sleep needs had  
stabilized around nine hours. Since there were 14  
hours of darkness between dusk and dawn, that  
left five hours of firelight time to fill.

They built boxes. They made fur accessories.  
Scully was in the middle of stitching together  
one rabbit fur boot sock and when the rabbits she  
brought back today were tanned, she would be able  
to finish the pair. The martens were so small,  
that Mulder made pouches out of them. Scully's  
hung on her jacket belt and she used it to carry  
her spare ammo clips. He studied his unfinished  
snowshoe forms leaning against the wall.

They definitely weren't getting out of here in  
three or four weeks.

It struck him for the first time, that back when  
this had all started, he really hadn't seen much  
difference between staying put and walking out.  
If they could acquire food here, they could  
acquire food on the go. They could build a  
shelter anywhere so the only real problem was  
clothing. A couple deer and their problems would  
be solved.

Mulder was slowly coming to realize just how  
lucky ...and naive, he had been.

Scully's deer had been so dramatic, had seemed  
like so much food, that he had failed to consider  
the fact that it had largely been a matter of  
blind luck. Her snare lines had netted them a  
continuous supply of rabbits, but he was only now  
beginning to realize just how different that was  
from hunting skill and just how much they were  
eating. Between them they were consuming at least  
a rabbit a day - and there was no escaping the  
fact that both of them should be eating more.  
They had both lost weight despite the available  
food.

Was Scully even catching a rabbit a day?

And if she didn't have her snare lines, how and  
what would they catch instead?

The fact was, that they were safe here. They had  
food, shelter and they were rapidly acquiring  
clothes and tools. Over the last two weeks,  
Scully had expanded her traplines and their  
surplus of food bought them time to trap more  
food. Once they started moving, however, they  
would leave the traplines behind and need to rely  
on hunting. Instead of having snares working for  
them while they worked, they would consume their  
stores on the march, having no choice to then be  
successful each and every time they stopped to  
hunt. With their elevated energy needs, they  
would consume their food that much faster. They  
were losing weight now. How much more would they  
lose on the march?

How much more could they afford to lose?

They would need to make a shelter each night -  
that would take time, energy and they had no  
guarantees what sort of terrain they were heading  
into. The chances of being able to build the sort  
of shelter they currently had , every night,  
every time, were slight. He wasn't sure any other  
type of shelter would be sufficient. Not in the  
long-term. Not when they had no idea what sort of  
terrain they were moving into. Especially when  
they were also moving steadily into colder  
weather. They would need to catch a lot of  
rabbits to make even a small blanket and would  
that compensate for a more hastily built or less  
well -insulated shelter?

A shelter allowed you to survive. It did not  
guarantee that you got to keep all your toes.

It violated every one of his instincts. Every  
fiber of his being shouted that they should be  
doing something to rescue themselves. That if  
they truly were intelligent, resourceful, action-  
orientated people, then they should be doing more  
than sitting on their butts, catching rabbits,  
waiting to be rescued. It felt lazy. It felt  
cowardly and it felt wrong.

But he was beginning to think that his  
instincts were 180 degrees from intelligent.

At least out here.

It felt easy, because it was safe. And his brain  
kept trying to tell him that safe wasn't the way  
he should be feeling in this circumstance. But  
his brain also seemed to have a small problem  
remembering just how much work "easy" took.  
Worse, his mind kept telling him that roads lead  
to civilization and that somewhere two or three  
hours down this road there were people. True,  
three hours was a measurement by car. But the  
average human walking pace was 3 mph. Even given  
the short days and the need to build a shelter  
every night, they should be able to walk six or  
seven hours per day. That meant 20 miles per day  
if they were lucky. Rationally, a week should get  
them anywhere they had to be.

Until he took a closer look at the equation.

One, they were assuming they would not get lost.  
That was not as silly as it sounded. With the  
road covered in snow, the tell-tale edges were  
vanishing. A long stretch through sparse trees,  
open fields or swamps, and they might very well  
lose track of the road. Especially if it  
curved...and they did not. On open ground, with  
no electric lines, fences or other signs to  
follow and everything flattened to uniformity  
with a six foot blanket of snow, they would only  
know they had a problem when they reached trees  
again, and found no pathway cut through them.

Two. They did not know what kind of terrain they  
were moving into. They might very well find that  
they could not average 3mph. In loose fluffy  
snow, dragging sleds and carrying packs, day  
after day? He would be very surprised if they  
managed it.

Three. The weather. A snowstorm could trap them  
in one place for days. The snow did not even have  
to be heavy to end their walking. All they needed  
was high wind. The risk of hypothermia due to  
wind chill and loss of visibility due to white  
outs would eliminate several days of travel.  
Extreme cold would be just as bad. Both  
conditions would keep them from hunting for food,  
so they would not even be able to make some  
productive use of the time. All they would be  
able to do would be to huddle in their shelter  
and wait.

Four. Food. How often would they have to stop to  
hunt? How many of those hunts would be  
successful? How much of that food would they be  
able to take with them and how long would it  
last. Their metabolic needs could easily double  
if not triple or more. Could they even eat enough  
to keep warm and moving under those  
circumstances?

He was beginning to understand why so many people  
died walking away from plane crashes.

"Scully?"

"Hmmm?"

He looked over to find her focused on her rabbit  
sock. A wolf skull, boiled clean rested upside  
down on the table by her bent head. Melted tallow  
and a cattail wick made an impromptu lamp that  
threw an amazing amount of bright, albeit smoky,  
light.

"We're not walking out of here any time soon, are  
we?"

Her hands paused, then she made another stitch.

"No."

He found himself staring at his watch. Why was he  
still wearing it? Their lives now were ruled by  
the lines between night and day, not the  
timetable of nine to five, late night programming  
or when the drive-through closed at Burger Boy.  
Was he still doing it? Trying to force a  
timetable of something that simply would be?

Question: When would they be ready?

Answer: Whenever they were ready.

Mulder's hand hesitated and then he slowly  
unfastened the band and slipped the watch  
from his wrist. He just held it, wondering what  
on earth he was supposed to do with it.  
Finally he dropped it into the pouch at his  
waist where it clinked softly against his spare  
clips.

Whenever they were ready.


	4. Chapter 4

He had been able to justify the expense by  
blaming the Minnesota field office. The FBI had  
fucked up and now there was a violent, escalating  
sexual sadist on the loose. The fact that two  
agents were missing was almost considered fine  
print. He hauled in profilers from the VCU,  
agents from three separate field offices and task  
force members from municipal and state law  
enforcement agencies. The Minnesota FBI office  
building was suddenly thrust back into its role  
as the hub and home of a command center dedicated  
to finding Samuel Walsh Corman.

It was a little bit busier and a whole lot more  
crowded than the last go 'round. Faxes hummed  
24/7 as copies of regional, local and state maps  
were sent to every state, city and map dot police  
station across Minnesota. Locals confirmed the  
accuracy or inaccuracy of the maps and swarms of  
deputies were sent to check on every cabin,  
cottage, summer home and hunting cabin they could  
find. When they were done, hunters and old-timers  
were polled to see if they remembered any cabins  
not marked on the maps and these were checked out  
too.

Roadblocks were set up around entrances to  
rivers, lakes,state parks and state border  
crossings. Flyers were dispatched, hunters were  
warned to keep their eyes open and the owners of  
abandoned cars suddenly found state troopers on  
their doorsteps. Descriptions of all cars stolen  
within 48 hours of the estimated kidnapping were  
circulated,and on the off chance Corman might try  
to slip into Canada, marina and boat docks were  
canvassed, patrolled and more flyers distributed.  
The RCMP and the OPP did the same on the Canadian  
side of the Great Lake. Special bulletins were  
faxed to radio stations, tv stations and web  
stations across North America and because of the  
serial nature of his crimes and the escalating  
danger level, Skinner approached the producers of  
America's Most Wanted.

Thousands of tips poured in. Tens of thousands of  
man-hours were spent following up each and every  
one. Hundreds of police officers and field agents  
manned phones, faxes and computers hoping to  
find the one clue that would catch a killer.

One day into the investigation, the status of the  
missing agents was considered grave and  
endangered. Three days into it, the profilers and  
task force members started to avoid the eyes of  
Assistant Director Skinner. They nodded as he  
told them that if anyone could talk Corman into  
making a mistake it was Mulder. Then, when he  
stalked from the room, they looked again at the  
MO and swallowed. At the five day mark, they  
agreed with him that the agent profiles on Mulder  
and Scully showed an enormous will to survive,  
then they reread the nighttime temperatures for  
the last three days.

On the seventh day, during the tail end of an  
arctic snow storm, they said nothing at all.

Officially the investigation began to shift  
focus. Corman, with two live agents, would be  
holed up somewhere cutting chunks from their  
dying bodies. If they were dead, with his blood-  
lust temporarily assuaged, Corman would be on the  
move and looking for more victims. Troopers spent  
less time chasing where he had been, and starting  
spreading more flyers around where he might be  
going.

On day 14, Agents Mulder and Scully were  
unofficially presumed dead.

Maggie Scully glared at an exhausted Walter  
Skinner as he stood in the doorway of her motel  
room and told him flat out that she did not  
believe it. She had given up too soon once  
before, she was not going to do it again. Tara  
Scully, curled up on one of the beds,was too  
emotionally battered to react. This was not the  
first time she had seen her husband's family in  
turmoil, but it was the first time she had seen  
first hand the effort, the hours and the  
emotional rollercoaster behind the official  
words, "We're doing all we can".

Because "all we can" was not enough, and the  
world was suddenly a much larger and scarier  
place than it had been two weeks before.

Over the next seven days, missing person's  
reports from Minnesota and bordering states were  
scoured for a match to Corman's victim profile  
and methodology. The profilers expected at least  
one, possibly two matches based on the pace of  
the killer's escalation. Nothing. They expanded  
their search across the country.

Still nothing.

VICAP considered the disturbing possibility that  
by breaking his pattern in order to go after  
Agents Mulder and Scully, the killer may have  
discovered something he liked, and altered his  
MO. They reran the missing person's data looking  
for signature commonalities separate from modus  
operandi. They still came up empty. Finally they  
went back to AD Skinner with the answer he did  
not want to hear.

Without bodies, there was no trail to follow.

There was nothing more they could do.

On day 21, Tara Scully tearfully told her mother-  
in-law that she had to go home. Maggie Scully  
calmly said that she understood, but that she  
wasn't leaving. Not this time. Not yet. Then she  
went to the church and lit bitter candles that  
seemed to burn too softly for the anger and fear  
in her soul.

On day 28, without more bodies, without more  
leads, the investigation was downgraded to a  
local operation. The task force was downsized  
and the case assigned to four agents from  
Minnesota who would send fresh flyers out around  
hunting time and who would dutifully co-ordinate  
any follow-up on leads that might arise.

On day 29, Walter Skinner was ordered back to  
Washington by the Director himself.

Maggie Scully found him sitting alone in the  
motel bar, staring into the bottom of a glass of  
Coke. He said nothing, having found nothing there  
to say. She met his eyes defiantly, but when only  
bewildered pain and confusion looked back, her  
face began to crumble. For the first time in 29  
days, she cried for her daughter.

Thirty days after Samuel Corman escaped, Margaret  
Scully and Walter Skinner flew back to Washington  
DC.

Special Agents Mulder and Scully vanished without  
a trace.

********************************************

One more week turned into two, then three and  
finally four. With his new jacket, Mulder was  
fully woods functional and the agents spent  
a couple of days sorting out a new division of  
responsibilities. As it turned out, their  
respective talents did the choosing for them.

They quickly discovered that Mulder had a better  
touch with the traplines. In addition to  
the greater reach and strength which helped with  
building the predator traps, he seemed to have an  
instinctive touch when it came to setting the  
rabbit runs. Scully had teasingly suggested that  
perhaps his parents had known what they were  
doing. He actually smiled as he found himself in  
the unusual position of having his partner using  
his first name as an occasional nickname.

The thought of trying to explain that to anyone  
had him snickering off and on for an hour.

On the other hand, while Mulder could identify  
the deer tracks when he found them, actually  
locating the tracks was difficult. Locating the  
animal that made them proved almost impossible.  
By the time he got to where they had been, they  
were always somewhere else. Scully on the other  
hand seemed to be developing an almost  
subconscious instinct for where the animals were  
hiding. She still found herself watching flagging  
tails and bounding hind-quarters, but she was  
getting closer. While Mulder would spend two days  
checking and resetting the traplines and then two  
days back at camp skinning and tanning the  
results, Scully spent every hour learning to  
stalk her prey, pausing only to collect and haul  
back a load of wood at the end of the day.

Mulder found himself watching his partner with  
increasing fascination. Partly it was the  
profiler in him, the psychologist, but  
mostly it was just the chance to witness  
the genesis of a new aspect of Scully.

It was tiny things. Things like developing an  
unconscious habit of continually scanning  
the sky, scenting the wind and noting the breeze.  
Twice she had surprised him by hauling in loads  
of firewood instead of practicing her deer  
stalking. Twice, snow had started falling within  
six hours. The fact that she had developed that  
skill was not so odd, but the speed at which  
these new habits were forming was uncanny. He  
suspected that she had probably always been  
sensitive to these things, and now, with her  
whole mind and body focused on learning and  
absorbing as quickly as possible, her body was  
able to catalogue and cross-reference the things  
it already knew. In a way, her habit of continual  
analysis and quantification of her environment  
probably assisted this process.

Partial skills and almost instincts, things that  
were dormant in civilization for the simple fact  
that there was nothing to apply them to, were  
suddenly stripped clean of constraints and  
actively being sought out and developed.  
Everything he saw, he had seen in diluted form in  
other situations, their odd careers sparking  
the need for limited development under certain  
circumstances. But this was the first time there  
had been enough time and enough need for the  
skills to develop into near full potential.

Her eyes scanned continuously for hollows and  
brush. Places her chosen prey might be inclined  
to rest, to sleep or to hide. Her path no longer  
headed in one straight line, but wandered as the  
terrain meandered, her body instinctively seeking  
to stay downwind of these likely places and  
choosing routes that should lead her to her  
quarry. Her growing skills were tallied in the  
increasing numbers of tracks and sightings. Her  
failures to get close prompted other changes.

Her eyes no longer focused on bush, on tree, but  
absorbed landscape, sensing rather than searching  
for that which was unusual or out of place. Her  
gait altered, becoming less heavy in the heel,  
path unconsciously chosen with an increasingly  
unerring eye to avoiding the noisy crunchy crusts  
of snow that would collapse with explosive  
suddenness and send her target bounding away as  
if from a gunshot. She learned to differentiate  
between the wind through the bush and the brush  
of fur against tree.

Four weeks, six weeks earlier, she trooped  
through the bush as though one of Hannibal's foot  
soldiers. Point A to point B in a steady rhythm  
designed to get her to her destination without  
fail,without complaint. Now, Mulder watched as  
she drifted, occasionally walking, suddenly  
pausing for no reason to listen and evaluate and  
then move on. He watched her follow tracks for no  
other reason than to learn where they went. From  
some of things she said, the vast empty  
wilderness was suddenly one big extremely  
populated and interconnected society whose rules  
she was just beginning to learn, whose  
inhabitants she was just learning how to see.

In the process, he learned that they were not as  
alone as he had thought. Wolf packs, fox  
families, badgers, bobcats and beaver. Squirrels,  
rabbits, martens, fishers, coyote and wolverine.  
Deer, elk and moose.

Lions and tigers and bears...oh my.

She didn't shoot any of the predators. There did  
not seem to be a point. It was only a matter of  
time before she learned to find the deer and one  
deer gave them so much that they needed. Now that  
they both had warm clothes, it seemed both a  
waste of ammo and a waste of life to take  
something simply because she could. It was the  
same reason he had stopped setting predator  
traps.

Mulder's unbelievable luck with rabbit runs had  
bagged them enough furs to finish two pairs of  
boot socks for each of them. Even after Scully  
co-opted a handful for feminine hygiene purposes,  
they still had enough to start on rabbit fur  
vests. By design, the vests were little more than  
long rectangular strips of leather with a hole  
cut in the center for the head to push through.  
The vest was laced loosely at the sides and was  
originally meant to be worn under the deerskin  
jackets. Both agents however, often found  
themselves using just their vests when working  
around the camp and on warmer days.

It was actually a good thing for their food  
stores that the rabbits were available in such  
numbers. They had found their appetites roaring  
back with painful demand. Instead of the vague  
urgings that normally prompted a call to the  
House of Taiwan or a run to Burger Boy, this  
hunger was a vast hollow emptiness that ached in  
intensity and demanded to be filled. Both agents  
found themselves craving the higher fat cuts of  
meat and only a worry over e-coli and worms kept  
them from devouring the meat at the rare rather  
than medium-rare stage.

In spite of their appetites, a box full of smoked  
rabbit joined the boxes of smoked deer.  
By this point, they had reached a state of  
equilibrium. They were no longer adding to their  
stores, but they were not really eating into  
them. There was a definite shift in the  
proportions of deer to rabbit however as they ate  
more of the high fat deer than bunny.

Mulder was not really worried about starvation.  
What he worried about was where the hell they  
were going to put the meat when Scully finally  
figured out the last pieces of the hunting puzzle  
and started bringing the deer home on a near  
daily basis. He had a feeling that once she  
figured out what she was doing, they were in for  
a major meat packing moment. Not that he would  
complain. The old bullet wound in his left leg,  
his butt and both his knees were getting more  
insistent about a warm pair of leggings and they  
needed rawhide, tent hides, sleeping furs and more  
rawhide. Scully had commented that a native  
American wardrobe of outer robe, shirt,jacket,  
leggings, and boots could take about ten hides.

He had just looked at her in shock and started  
building another meat smoker.

He had also started building more boxes. Lots of  
them.

Based on their current intake, he estimated that  
they each were going through two to three lbs of  
meat a day. The days were only getting colder and  
they would be dragging heavy sleds so he  
cautiously doubled that estimate to an average  
equivalent of five lbs of fresh meat each per  
day. It seemed like an unbelievable amount, but  
better safe than sorry. They were already eating  
the highest fat cuts of meat and although they  
had stopped losing weight, they were not gaining  
any either. So...10 lbs of meat per day between  
the two of them. The average deer dressed out  
somewhere between 60 and 90 lbs. That meant that  
the average deer, assuming they ate the whole  
thing, would last them 6 to 9 days.

Not long.

Add to that fact that logically they should only  
carry the choicest cuts with them, eating the  
lesser cuts here at camp and saving the high fat  
cuts for the trip. Assuming they took the best  
40% of the deer with them, that meant that one  
deer might only provide 25-35 lbs of high fat  
meat. Assuming a three week supply - probably the  
minimum they should consider carrying - they  
would need four deer apiece.

Any way you looked at it, they needed a hell of a  
lot of deer.

No wonder humans learned to grow vegetables  
and raise cows. At an average dressed out  
weight of 800 lbs, a cow was the meat equivalent  
of ...gee, ELEVEN deer. More than twice the  
hide, too. Hell of an incentive to build fences  
and grow corn. And then there was the milk, the  
cheese, the sour cream, the...

Mulder had yanked that train of thought to a halt  
when he realized he was drooling.

The beginning of week eight,Scully finally got  
her deer. She got another two days later and  
damned if she didn't get two more three days  
after that. By the time she finished off her  
first clip and was halfway through the second,  
Mulder was so sick of skinning and smoking deer  
he was ready to lay down in front of the first  
UFO he saw and say "Take me."

Scully had started field dressing the things  
which made life a little easier. Skinning the  
deer on site, she made a rough pack of the hide  
and internal organs and carried it back to the  
camp. The deer itself spent the night hanging in  
a tree. Because of the offal left on the ground,  
they made it a practice for both agents to  
retrieve the deer the next day. There was usually  
evidence that something or many somethings had  
found the entrails in the night. Occasionally,  
all that was left on the ground was bloody snow.  
But they never ran into anything. Luckily.

Whether she just came into her own or it was the  
fact that she had been studying the local  
territory for almost four weeks or just the  
bloody weather, she was bringing the damn things  
down faster than they could be tanned and smoked.  
Raw frozen hides hung from the trees while Scully  
alternated between hauling back wood for the  
smokers and hunting down more victims for the  
assembly line.

Mulder just sank into a haze of slicing and  
smoking. He was keeping up until she brought down  
deer number five. Then he started freezing the  
strips on racks before dumping them into boxes  
and hauling the boxes into the trees. The car  
trunk was already full by the time she killed  
deer number six and around the time Scully  
brought in seven, eight and nine, Mulder had two  
smokers going full-time plus the smoke chamber in  
the lean-to. With all the deer meat, he was  
tempted to just skin the rabbits and toss the  
meat, but something in him cringed at the  
thought, so he skinned and froze the rabbit furs,  
then tossed the roughly jointed meat into a box  
for storage.

A three day snow storm forced Scully to  
temporarily abandon her efforts to single-  
handedly thin the local ungulate population. It  
was the smoking that was the time consuming  
chore. By the time the storm hit, the deer were  
sliced and frozen into boxes so the agents  
worked in shifts to keep the smokers going all  
night. During the day, they hauled back firewood  
and tanned rabbit pelts.

They had finished with the rabbit furs, made an  
impressive number of boxes and had boiled down  
the hooves and collected the neatsfoot oil.  
Scully was making plans to collect more deer, but  
for the moment had vanished into the woods on  
some mysterious errand. Mulder did not ask. For  
once, his curiosity was comatose and he simply  
relaxed as the scent of smoking meat and  
woodsmoke combined with the aroma of pine needle  
tea.

He almost could not believe they were finished.  
Oh there was still a hell of a lot of work left  
to do. Fleshing and tanning hides, equipment to  
make. And no doubt Scully would be hauling back  
at least two or three more deer. But for now,  
the frantic pace that had ruled them for the last  
two weeks was temporarily on hold.

Mulder looked down at the private project he was  
working on and wondered if Scully even remembered  
the date. She hadn't brought it up, and he hadn't  
wanted to ruin his surprise. So he had said  
nothing and silently worked on his secret project  
whenever she was not around. Because according to  
the watch in his pouch, today was December 24.

And tomorrow was Christmas day.

The shadowed living room, lit only by the  
burnished glow of a quietly crackling fire, was  
a deceptively peaceful place. Certainly no one  
watching the lonely figure sprawled in a deep  
chair pulled close to the fireplace would ever  
guess that within these walls a quiet war was  
being waged.

In deference to the season, a small Christmas  
tree rested in the corner, but the man had not  
bothered to plug in the long string of white  
mini-lights he had clumsily wrapped around the  
tiny pine. No. The most important light was  
already lit and shining in the window.

Would they laugh if they knew?

Somehow, he thought they would understand. Or  
perhaps, if not understand, then appreciate. This  
tattered custom born of long ago superstitions  
and half-remembered folktales. It was more  
appropriate than they would ever know.

The flame they had started was burning bright.

We are the dead

Walter Skinner allowed his lips to stretch over  
bared teeth as he contemplated the files resting  
on the table beside him. These...these were a  
Christmas gift he had saved all week to savor.  
Now, picking up the topmost he allowed himself  
the indulgence of contemplating the strength and  
power of small things.

Short days ago we lived

The tattered remnants of the Consortium must be  
shitting bricks right about now.

It had started quietly enough, the small  
revolution. Alive, his two monster chasing agents  
had been a potential embarrassment to the FBI.  
Dead, they might have been a footnote. But  
missing...now that was a whole different story.  
Skinner's smile took on a dark edge as he  
imagined the consternation the men in the shadows  
must have felt when they first realized what the  
rumblings foretold.

Or maybe they had not seen it yet.

But they would.

Sidelong glances that were just a bit too long  
and held a hint of suspicion. Agents who formally  
might have chuckled nervously when the leading  
class wit made the requisite Spooky jokes now  
stayed conspicuously silent. Off-hand comments  
about government conspiracies suddenly no longer  
seemed as funny and Skinner had noticed a decided  
shift in attitude gathering slowly, moving on  
soft feet through the halls of the Hoover  
building.

Felt dawn, saw sunset's glow

It was not an overnight rebellion. None of his  
male agents were showing up at work wearing glow-  
in-the-dark Marvin the Martian ties, but suddenly  
the PD was finding it possible to actually get an  
agent to talk to them if they called about...  
unusual case reports. Agents who would once have  
merrily thrown the file on a trolley to the  
basement suddenly found themselves in a quandary.

What to do with the files?

Some just shrugged and dumped them. But a few got  
through. Reluctantly. With grave misgivings.  
Federal officers who ordinarily would have felt  
silly taking this seriously, did it anyway.

Loved and were loved

Some did it because the two downed agents were  
owed at least this much. Others did it out of  
guilt. Others accidentally stumbled over  
something they could not explain and found it  
that much harder to ignore the next time. Slowly  
but surely, a handful of people got up the nerve  
to say "what if".

And the first domino fell.

And now we lie in Flander's Field

Agent Caplan, unhappy about the evidence on her  
case disappearing one night, commented out loud  
that maybe the aliens stole it. Someone laughed  
and jeered that she was beginning to sound like  
old Spooky and his missing partner. Caplan  
growled and snapped back that maybe they were  
missing because they got too close to  
something...and several people in the crowd  
shifted uneasily and forgot to laugh.

One of those people, Agent Gilbert, found himself  
staring at a casefile involving a witness who  
claimed a werewolf did it. With Mulder and Scully  
in mind, he was perhaps more patient and polite  
than he might have been normally and the deputy  
on the other end of the line was grateful to be  
taken seriously. So grateful, that when the odd  
disappearances continued into the neighboring  
district, he confidently urged the Sheriff to  
approach the local field office.

Needless to say, the local agents were a bit  
startled, but in return for the respect he had  
been shown, young Deputy Willis had taken care to  
study the FBI crime scene field manual cover to  
cover and he made sure that he did not miss a  
thing. The field office was not only thrown by  
the meticulous evidence gathering and labeling,  
they actually found something.

Take up your quarrel with the foe

They just did not know what it was.

Someone mentioned the X-Files, and when the  
locals called Washington to request their  
assistance they were informed that the division  
was shut down due to the fact that the agents  
running that department had disappeared. After  
determining that this actually was not a joke,  
the cop jokingly asked if they had been kidnapped  
by aliens. The silence on the other end was just  
a bit too long and the voice just a shade too  
light as it said 'the FBI has no opinion on the  
existence of extraterrestrials". Which had the  
unusual effect of giving the listener the odd  
feeling that maybe the FBI did not have an  
opinion, but the agent he was talking to was  
contemplating the possibility.

That slight hesitation before denial was more  
damaging than any photograph taken since Roswell.  
Because these were feds. And the cops took them  
seriously. They began to ask "what if".

To you, from failing hands we throw

Skinner watched from the sidelines as five weeks  
after Mulder and Scully disappeared, someone out  
in Nebraska very seriously asked Research to get  
them everything they had on vampires. Annoyed at  
what he perceived to be a waste of time and a  
personal insult, the head researcher, under the  
guise of saving himself from redundancy, threw  
the information up on the internal server and  
gave said agent's email address as a contact.

Within a week, the bewildered agent received  
twenty-three very serious information requests  
from people who normally would have talked to  
Mulder. Many of them had talked to Mulder. They  
ranged from an NYPD detective who thought he had  
a serial killer who thought he was a vampire to a  
Deputy Sheriff in Iowa who thought he had a cult  
related killing on his hands. Hasty information  
requests to other agents inevitably led to  
numerous references to the X-Files. In  
desperation, the harried agent started asking  
Research for relevant X-file casefiles to be  
cross-referenced to the information requests.

The assistant to the original researcher suddenly  
found this new influx of information requests  
tossed onto her desk. By chance, she was one of  
the researchers who had worked with Agent Mulder  
to reassemble much of the data lost in the fire.  
As a result, she actually had many of the  
case files with accompanying documentation scanned  
and digitally available. She also had much of the  
research information done for Mulder over the  
years still rolling around in the bowels of her  
computer.

She had the information, she just needed a couple  
of days to put it all together.

Without realizing that the first researcher meant  
it as a nasty joke, the assistant followed his  
example by placing the gathered data on the  
secure server. The combination of meticulous  
background notes and cross-references to  
digitized casefiles created an instantly credible  
database of the paranormal.

The researcher found herself the de facto database  
manager and in an effort to keep all of the  
information current, sent a very serious memo out  
to all FBI personnel asking for notification when  
filing related reports. For most people, it was  
just another resource, but the memo stuck in a  
few people's minds. The existence of the database  
was justified when the NYPD detective, using  
information from the site, not only caught the  
killer but specifically noted in his report that  
the information provided had given him the keys  
to predicting the killer's behavior.

One agent noted that the differences from  
traditional myth and the manner in which the  
crime differed from the historical, actually gave  
clues to the behavioral profile. BSU received so  
many emails and phone calls regarding this theory  
that they put together a research group to  
analyze past cases. A chat room was opened and  
links added.

All of this simply meant that the embryonic tools  
were there when the inevitable happened and  
someone stumbled over something that could not be  
programmed, categorized or easily referenced. On  
the other hand, it also could not be denied. Nine  
weeks after Mulder and Scully disappeared, a  
bandaged and limping field agent pinned up  
several memos around the Hoover building and  
emailed copies to all field offices. Further  
investigation proved it to be a darkly humorous  
list of all the ways not to try to kill various  
monsters.

Most people just laughed and took it as a joke.

But some made photocopies.

The torch be yours to hold it high

Skinner had watched all this in silence and done  
nothing. Until today. Today he had given himself  
an early present and fired the first shot of a  
civil war. And the funny thing about it...he was  
just doing his job.

Heavy laughter swirled in the room as he  
considered his next move. This morning, he had  
called two agents into his office and summarily  
closed their case. No reason. No explanation. No  
recourse.

The two agents had stood there stunned. He did  
not blame them. The case was a two bit scandal  
that had accidentally crossed paths with Roush  
Industries. Roush was not even involved. But  
that wasn't the point. The point was that two  
highly intelligent agents were justifiably  
wondering why the AD had suddenly pulled out the  
big guns for a non-existent case. And if they  
thought to do a database search of the server,  
Roush Industries was going to come up in a few  
strange places.

X-Files places.

How ironic that he was pulling a leaf from  
Kritchgau's book. Creating phantom conspiracies  
where none exist to convince the ignorant of a  
real conspiracy no one could talk about. He would  
chose his cases wisely. Then he would close cases  
just a bit too fast, come down just a bit too  
hard and give particular agents serious reasons  
to remember certain names.

Even his own death at this point would only add  
fuel to the fire. Because there would be plenty  
of agents who rightly assumed he had something to  
hide. The uneasy suspicion in the two agents this  
morning was just the beginning.

If ye break faith with us who die

Maggie Scully believed that her daughter was  
still alive. Walter Skinner was choosing to  
believe her. He wanted to believe her. He needed  
to believe her. But for now, he would use their  
disappearance to make things as uncomfortable as  
possible for the shadow men. And make sure there  
was a war for them to come back to.

Turning his head he stared at the fat pillar  
candle shining in the window. The same candle he  
lit each night, a beacon to bring the lost ones  
home. Raising a glass of wine, he let the light  
shine through the ruby liquid and phrased a toast  
to old memories, lost friends and fallen  
comrades.

We shall not sleep...

"Merry Christmas, Agents." 


	5. Chapter 5

So what do you get for the person who has almost  
nothing?

It had to be practical. They were not wasting  
resources on frivolity. So none of this "get them  
something they would not buy for themselves"  
stuff. But the list of things they needed or  
wanted was getting to be increasingly long, and  
there were small things that had been regretfully  
put aside...

It had to be lightweight. Once they were on the  
move, personal items were limited to what they  
could carry.

And it had to say something. Mulder pondered over  
that one. Everything they needed right now was of  
such a direct practical purpose, that it was  
difficult to find something that not only met  
those practical needs, but was something that  
could actually be made with the limited time and  
resources available.

But what could he make that showed both  
practicality and caring? A possible answer had  
occurred to him just before Scully started  
knocking deer down like nine pins. Instantly he  
had rejected it as being something that would  
embarrass the hell out of her. The problem was,  
that the more he thought about it, the more it  
made perfect sense. The fact that it was  
something one partner would not ordinarily get  
another...well, hell.

Partners would not ordinarily know their partners  
needed something like this.

It was the situation that was so cock-eyed.

So he squashed his initial qualms and worked on  
his gift while Scully was out hunting. The first  
part was easy. Taking one of the larger deer  
hooves he had boiled it until it softened. Then  
he had flattened, scraped, smoothed and carved  
until he had comb she could use for her hair. His  
partner was fastidious about her grooming habits,  
and using nothing but her fingers was driving her  
crazy.

The second part?

His partner needed a replacement for her bra.

Repeated washings, heat from the fire and the  
abrasive effects of the pine needles was breaking  
down the fabric of their clothes quickly. As far  
as Mulder could tell, she had more or less  
stopped wearing it during the day in an effort to  
make it last longer.

If he had thought he would survive, he would have  
just suggested that she stop wearing it at all.  
He had already had to bite his tongue several  
mornings when he saw the way the heat twisted  
fasteners on the shoulder straps were digging  
into her skin. Unfortunately, he could not come  
up with a politically correct way to make  
that suggestion.

And considering where his hand occasionally ended  
up, he could see why she might have a few doubts  
about the selflessness of that idea.

The fact was, however, that somewhere along the  
line they had perfected the art of looking  
without seeing. He had once tried to explain to  
another agent that while he was perfectly aware  
that his partner was a beautiful woman, that most  
times, he was well and truly not consciously  
aware that she was female. Which, when you  
stopped to think about the low level hum of  
sexual awareness that seemed to wrap itself  
around their partnership like background noise,  
it was not surprising that the other man had just  
looked at him funny.

But hell, that awareness was something that they  
consciously chose to...repress wasn't the right  
word. Subsume? Convert? Channel? As frustrating  
as it could be, it was also fun. And so many of  
the needs that people satisfied with sex were  
already being met by their partnership in other  
ways. So he knew why they confused people. The  
fact was, that he was more than capable of  
looking at his partner, recognize and enjoy what  
he was seeing, without being trapped in the  
moment.

Most of the time.

There were good reasons after all, not to sleep  
with your partner. Not the least of which was  
making sure you were doing it for the right  
reasons. They respected each other enough to need  
to know why the hell they were doing it in the  
first place.

A mistake could cost too damn much.

He had no problem with the concept of sleeping  
with someone for simple human comfort. Hell, he  
had done it. Certain years while at the BSU  
immediately came to mind. No harm, no foul...as  
long as everybody knew the rules. But that was  
with people who really were nothing more than  
colleagues. Co-workers. But his relationship with  
Scully was so damn convoluted he did not know how  
he felt half the time.

Did he love her? Of course. Was he attracted to  
her? Sometimes. Was she someone he wanted to  
spend his foreseeable future with? He was already  
doing that, wasn't he?

But could they survive all that togetherness  
without the work to hold them together?

That was a larger issue. Throw in the question of  
whether they could hold both relationships  
together at the same time and it became a  
logistical nightmare. Trying to sort all that out  
while in the middle of a shooting war was a  
nightmare. They were still looking for emotional  
down-time to deal with issues from last year. And  
the year before that. And probably the year  
before that. So in the middle of all this, how  
the hell could you justify turning to someone for  
nothing more than comfort when you knew they  
would not turn you away?

You could not.

You would not.

Because it was an abuse of trust no matter how  
you looked at it. And the potential hurt cost a  
hell of a lot more than a little self control.  
Their existing relationship put them in a unique  
position to hurt each other if comfort was all  
that was asked or could be given. Especially if  
the need was one-sided.

So run Fox run. See Fox run. See Fox bolt for the  
goddamn door when she caught him off guard with  
wine and cheese and possibilities turning in her  
eyes. Because if she had asked, he would have  
said yes.

They needed to wait. Wait until they knew for  
themselves what they wanted, what they were  
really asking. He owed her the certainty of  
knowing she was choice, not lack of alternatives  
or even laziness and convenience. He owed it  
to himself.

She owed it to him.

They were too aware of the damage they could  
cause if they moved too soon, promised too  
much...were just plain wrong. He would rather  
regret lost time than destroy everything by  
moving too fast. By being too greedy. Too  
desperate.

By finding out that the answer was no.

He could wait.

They had both lost too much. Their certainties,  
their privacy, the sanctity of their own homes.  
They had had every illusion stripped away, until  
control over their lives and their bodies was  
nothing more than a hollow fantasy. They walked  
in a world where doors meant nothing, where every  
action even in the privacy of their homes was  
done with the full knowledge that it could be  
taped, watched and scrutinized by the uncaring  
enemy.

Was it any wonder that they guarded the only  
thing they truly owned anymore...their hearts and  
minds.

And to ask someone to drop that last barrier. To  
know that if you told her that you not only loved  
her, but that you were in love with her, that she  
would trust you, would believe you. Even if she  
feared you did not know what you were talking  
about she would take the chance anyway because  
your existing relationship would not allow her to  
not believe you. To force her to take that  
risk...you had to be damn sure you knew what you  
were talking about. Because what if you were  
wrong? What if you mistook need for love and  
found out too late that you could not keep the  
promises you made her?

What if she decided later that with the best of  
intentions, what you offered just wasn't enough?  
That she could not keep her promises to you?

They did not have the luxury of walking away from  
a mistake.

They needed each other in far too many ways to  
play careless games in the name of "taking a  
chance". Their fears were valid. Seven years. So  
much time and too little. Too much too lose and  
so little time to be sure.

Because neither of them could afford to make  
promises they could not honor.

Their lives depended on it.

*************************************

Scully had excavated a large pit starting about a  
week earlier. At first, Mulder had thought that  
she was planning another smoker, but the pit had  
gotten bigger and bigger and she had dumped most  
of the dirt close enough to the pit to keep it  
thawed. She had also kept a roaring fire going in  
the thing until the ground for almost two feet  
around was warm and dry.

Christmas morning, she had gotten up early and  
started another hot hardwood fire. He had gone  
for firewood at her request, and when he came  
back, the pit was filled back in and there was a  
fire blazing on top. He did not ask, she did not  
offer. He had however, been about to bring out  
her gift when she suddenly grabbed her snowshoes  
and high-tailed it for the bush.

He was only slightly miffed since he was looking  
forward to seeing her face. On the other hand, he  
was starting to have second thoughts and dinner  
was looking more and more like a better time.  
Heck, he could wait until after dinner. Late  
evening even.

He sighed.

They had finished the smoking the day before, all  
of his rabbit hides were tanned and the deer  
hides could wait until tomorrow. No big messes  
today. Finally, he took out the woodsled and  
spent the morning searching for wood. Not  
firewood. Wood for travel-sleds. It was late  
afternoon by the time he made it back to camp,  
and Scully was waiting for him.

She was kicked back in the lean-to by the fire  
and drinking pine needle tea from the skull of a  
wolf. The first time she had done that it had  
seriously grossed him out. Now? He told himself  
that he should find it bizarre. But the fact was,  
was that sitting by the fire with pine boughs at  
her back and dressed in bush tanned leather and  
fur, it did not look fantastic at all.

It looked primitive as hell, though. And every  
once in awhile, he would glance at her lit by  
the firelight, her hair wild, her blue eyes  
intense, and he would suddenly get this weird  
feeling of being caught out of time. For a split  
second, she would look up and he would see, not  
Agent Dana Scully, but some warrior woman from  
her Gaelic past.

She would probably laugh if she knew.

Then again...he looked at her amused eyes as they  
watched him over the rim of the skull and sighed.

"Merry Christmas, Mulder."

Her accompanying grin was smug and he wondered  
what exactly her devious little mind had been up  
to. His eyes slid back to the fire and narrowed.  
Her grin widened.

"Uh uh. Christmas gift first."

She suddenly picked up a parcel by her side and  
before he guessed her intent, she tossed it at  
him. He caught it neatly, then eyed her  
speculatively. That grin...

"You are looking entirely too pleased with  
yourself, Agent Scully."

She grinned again and shifted over as he stepped  
into the lean-to. However, instead of sitting  
down beside her, he flashed her a grin of his own  
and dug a small stick box from the corner. He  
handed it to her with a flourish and the gleam in  
her eye brought back memories of another  
Christmas and tearing into wrapping paper at an  
ungodly hour Christmas morning. The speculative  
delight had been almost identical.

Her parcel was wrapped simply in a clean square  
of the car upholstery, the ends brought up and  
tied with leather lace. The fabric fell away to  
reveal a beautifully tanned deerskin pouch  
designed to slide onto his belt. Obviously Scully  
had snagged a piece of hide when he wasn't  
looking. And it was heavy. Curiously he undid the  
drawstring and his jaw dropped as he looked  
inside. Seeds. Nuts. Dried berries. All kinds. At  
least four different types and from the delicious  
aroma, the nuts were roasted. He looked up at her  
in astonishment. Except for the acorns, most of  
the seeds were tiny. When had she had time to  
gather all of these?

She smiled,"In case you're wondering, those are  
acorns, maple seeds, birch seeds, pine nuts, wild  
raisins and high bush cranberries."

Mulder shook his head in bemusement,"All of this  
is available in winter?"

"Uh huh. Although I committed felony theft for  
the acorn stash. The squirrel is filing charges."

Mulder grinned,"Why Agent Scully, I'm shocked."

Dryly,"So was he."

Mulder experimentally crunched a few of the seeds  
as her fingers worked to untie the laces binding  
the top of the box to the frame. They were  
surprising good. Almost painfully delicious after  
two months of nothing but meat. Mulder sighed  
happily. Warm clothes, Scully's company and snack  
food. What more could a man ask?

Well...maybe indoor plumbing.

Scully finally managed to get the laces undone  
and he suddenly found himself wondering again if  
this had been such a good idea. The hoof comb was  
lying right on top and from the pleased  
expression on her face, he had scored a hit with  
that one. It was not the comb, however, that had  
been giving him second thoughts.

She gave a surprised murmur as her fingers dug  
into the rabbit fur and realized just how soft  
the leather was. She had mentioned that repeated  
freezing and thawing before tanning was supposed  
to soften leather through the tenderizing effect  
of the ice crystals. Apparently it had worked,  
because the leather had come out sensuously soft  
and he had spent extra time on the rubbing and  
stretching part of the process.

He shifted uneasily as she turned it over in her  
hands and the underlying shape became clear. For  
a long moment she just held it in her hands. Then  
he heard a soft, "Oh Mulder." And then she was  
smiling at him, not a bright happy smile, but a  
fuzzy, tearful one that off hand, he could not  
recall seeing before. But she did not look  
unhappy,so he must have done something right.

He grinned in sheer relief and was startled when  
she took one look at his face and started to  
laugh. Despite a couple of inquiring eyebrows she  
just shook her head and smiled. Then she  
surprised him by turning her back and pulling off  
sweater and vest to try it on. He gazed at the  
fire while she laced and adjusted. Then studied  
her with curious eyes when she turned back  
around.

All in all, he had probably seen more of his  
partner's naked and semi-clothed body in the last  
two months than he had seen in the entire six  
years previous. As he had thought earlier, he had  
perfected the art of looking without seeing.  
Which is why he found himself totally unprepared  
for his emotional response to her attire.

It was little more than a rectangular band of fur  
with laces that almost completely pulled it  
together at the front. He had managed to give it  
a little shape by cutting out tiny slivers at the  
four main compass points around each breast and  
sewing them back together with tiny almost  
imperceptible stitches. Ultimately, he assumed  
that through wear and the constant tightening and  
retightening of the laces, the thing would  
eventually stretch to form fit. Even without  
that, however, he noted absently that it looked  
comfortable.

It wasn't the fact that, for all intents and  
purposes, it had been designed as a bra. It  
actually didn't look like one. It looked like a  
cross between a halter top and a bikini. In its  
primitive functionality, the white fur suited  
her. Her hair had grown slightly past her  
shoulders and without the attention of hairbrush,  
gel and blow dryer, her natural wave caused it to  
flow and curl in wild abandon. She needed only  
leggings and a wooden spear and he would have no  
difficulty imagining her as some ice age Viking  
warrior queen come to life.

So it wasn't how it looked that sent a blast of  
emotion screaming across his nerve endings and  
woke the animal instincts that lurked beneath  
civilized custom. It was seeing something that he  
had made, something crafted by his hands,  
touching her skin. It was the fact that she had  
accepted the gift. As if by wearing it, she had  
acknowledged some unspoken claim and primitive  
reflex wanted nothing so much as to stand up and  
growl "Mine!".

He bashed primitive reflex on the head with a  
mental fist and reminded it that instinct and  
reality had diverged in this situation.

Reflex wasn't convinced.

Nor was another part of his anatomy.

Which would have been fine if he had not looked  
up into her face and seen something feral and  
hungry staring back. For a long moment neither  
agent spoke, then Mulder managed a shaky breath  
and as if by unspoken agreement, both looked  
away.

She had the good sense to stay on the other side  
of the lean-to. He heard a unsteady sigh and a  
short unamused laugh.

"Shit."

His mouth responded before his brain could check  
the words over first,"I'll see that and raise you  
an uh oh."

There was a moment of dead silence, then she  
collapsed onto the log and started to giggle so  
hysterically he was not absolutely positive she  
wasn't crying. When she finally raised her head  
there were tears running down her face, but she  
was definitely laughing. Nearly out of control  
and an edgy kind of laughter, but laughing.

"Jesus Mulder. Your partner almost drags you  
back to her cave and all you can say is  
"uh oh"?"

Mulder smiled weakly. Should he explain that his  
brain was not exactly the part of his body in  
control of his thought processes right about now?

"Tell me again why this would be a bad idea?"

Uh oh.

He babbled the first things he could think of," I  
haven't brushed my teeth in three months. *You*  
haven't brushed your teeth in three months. No  
deodorant. No silk sheets. No candles. No bed..."

His brain was getting off track again and she was  
looking at him with the strangest look of  
surprise in her eyes. Almost as if she had had a  
revelation of some kind.

She murmured a couple of additions to his ad hoc  
list, " The situation is unnatural- due only to  
circumstance, we're partners, it might ruin our  
friendship..."

Oh right. He had forgotten those. Surprising  
how natural unnatural could feel. And what the  
hell was that look in her eyes?

"Was that everything?"

What was she finding so fascinating about his  
answers? Was that everything? He was having  
trouble remembering why he was trying to talk her  
out of this.

Oh right.

He dropped all pretense and went out on the limb  
as far as he had ever gone. No innuendo. No fall  
back. No safety net. No drugs to blame it on.  
Just a brutal honesty and the terrified  
vulnerability of his heart.

"Be very sure, Scully. Please."

Was that ragged whisper a warning or desperate  
plea? Did she even understand what he was telling  
her?

There was none of the sudden shock that he  
expected. Not even any real surprise. Just a  
thoughtful gaze that was as turned inward as it  
was directed at him. Then she was studying him  
again, weighing some decision in her mind. In a  
way, he almost wished she was not taking this so  
seriously.

Because no matter what she decided to do, he was  
screwed.

If she said yes...would she really be saying yes?

If she said no...

Despite the fact that he wanted her to say no,  
needed her to back off, his mind was crying out  
that it was not fair. He had not expected to be  
judged today and if she would just tell him what  
she wanted, he could find a way to give it to  
her. That he would do better, plead his case  
differently, offer her a hell of a lot more if  
she would just give him another chance...

Finally she stood and he was too terrified to  
look into her eyes. He did not want to see the  
choice he feared she was about to make. Either  
way, he knew he would lose.

"This isn't the right time to make this  
decision."

For a long moment he remained frozen, then he let  
out a single explosive breath that he had not  
even realized he was holding. She had found a way  
not to choose. Thank God. Thank whatever. She had  
not decided against him. He still had a bit more  
time. He refused to consider the swirling mass of  
emotion beneath the relief that felt like  
disappointment.

Emotions were damned illogical.

"Mulder?"

He looked up at her, too caught off guard to  
completely hide the confused mess he knew was  
visible in his eyes. But that was okay. Because  
he was staring into a mirror image of those  
emotions and they were not his alone.

"We both need to be sure."

He absorbed the words she spoke, as well as the  
ones she did not say. Then he nodded. This was  
not the time. He knew that. He really did. The  
disappointment...was something he could live  
with.

He was not alone and he was not the only one who  
was scared.

If she had said the words, if he did, in this  
place, under these circumstances, they would  
always wonder.

She was right.

They both had to be sure.

So he took a deep breath and dredged up a wry  
twist of the lips. "Dinner?"

She gaped at him a moment, then laughed outright,  
this time without the edge, without the pain.  
Normality returned to their abnormal lives.

"Dinner." she agreed.

As a diversion it was inspired.

Burning curiosity had its occasional uses and  
he really truly wanted to know what was up with  
that pit. The expression on her face was too  
self-satisfied. Whatever it was, it was gonna  
be good.

He could feel himself starting to drool.

Getting his Pavlovian responses under control he  
ignored his partner's smirk as he helpfully  
volunteered to move the fire and dig up whatever  
she had buried. He also resisted the urge to  
strangle her as she S..L..O..W..L..Y dug into the  
soft earth with a deer bone digging stick.

It was worth it.

The smell almost carried him off. Turkey. Oh God.  
TurkeyTurkeyTurkeyTurkeyTurkey. Where the hell  
had she found a turkey? Did wild turkeys  
grow...well... wild? He knew there were people  
raising wild turkeys for sport hunting, but were  
the really wild cousins still running around or  
were they extinct? Maybe some of the domesticated  
stock got loose and avoided the foxes and wolves  
long enough to reproduce. Actually, he found he  
did not care.

He just wanted her to hurry the hell up and...

...crack open a ball of mud?

Mulder stared down at the offending object. Then  
he looked back at his partner, a dismayed  
expression on his face.

"Where's the turkey?"

Okay, so that had come out sounding truly  
pitiful. But he...he still smelled turkey. He  
poked at the ball of mud suspiciously. Then he  
ducked reflexively when Scully yelped and yanked  
the mudball away from him.

"Don't!"

He froze.

Scully checked her mudball for cracks, then  
glared at him.

"Don't touch. If it cracks out here it'll be one  
god awful mess."

The turkey was inside the mudball? Mulder studied  
the soccer ball sized thing with renewed interest.  
Now that he looked closer, he could see that the  
mud actually appeared to be clay.

"Hey Scully. Isn't that roaster pot thing that  
Bill and Tara got you for Christmas last year  
made of clay?"

"You remember that?"

Was she joking? It was shaped like a chicken. Who  
could forget something like that?

Apparently clay was an all purpose cooking tool.  
The fire-hardened clay cracked and pulled away  
from the bird inside as Scully laid it on the  
table and smacked it. Skin and feathers tore  
away with it leaving the tender meat steaming  
in the winter chill. Hunks of meat fell from  
the carcass and it was neither pretty nor  
graceful.

It didn't last long enough to matter.

Scully had stuffed the cavity with a combination  
of cracked,roasted acorns and wild onions. The  
pungent aroma after nearly three months had both  
of them nearly to the point of hyperventilation  
as they luxuriated in the smell. The taste was  
beyond description.

Despite their efforts to be moderately civilized,  
they suspected that anyone watching from the  
outside would not have noticed the attempt as  
they ripped hunks of meat from the bones and  
scooped hot bits of stuffing with their fingers.

It turned out, however, that it was not turkey  
after all.

"Pheasant? As in $10 a pound pheasant? That  
pheasant?"

Scully just grinned at the irony of eating luxury  
game bird while trapped in the wilderness and  
scooped more of the acorn stuffing. They had long  
since reduced the first mudball to bare bones and  
were making serious inroads on the second. There  
was even a third one for leftovers.

Then she lit a tallow candle for her family and  
they both stared silently into the flickering  
flame as they thought about the ones they had  
left behind. Surprisingly enough there were no  
tears. Pain, yes, for Scully's family and those  
few friends close enough to miss them on this  
first Christmas after their disappearance. But no  
regret for themselves.

They were warm, they were safe and they had each  
other. They had peace,and hope,and a temporary  
reprieve from the war...but no regrets.

In the midst of nothing, they had everything that  
mattered.

********************************

True to his predictions, Scully brought down  
three more deer before turning her attention to  
other matters. Unable to leave the camp while the  
meat was smoking, Mulder started fleshing the  
deer hides, but left the tanning until evenings  
when both of them were present to work the large  
and unwieldy hides.

Scully, meanwhile, started a new career as an  
acorn pirate. No squirrel den was safe from the  
red-headed scourge of the wilderness and their  
breakfast diet soon expanded to include acorn  
porridge. The added oil and protein allowed them  
to move completely to eating rabbit and the low  
fat cuts of deer meat.

Following the deer had led her to the wild  
onions, and she soon discovered several swampy  
areas around moving water that had not frozen  
over yet. In addition to a few bitter greens,  
these unfrozen areas provided wild carrots (with  
deer and onions, they actually had a stew) while  
the brooks and rivers yielded up a small harvest  
of fish.

Mulder was ecstatic and some of his enthusiastic  
experimentation with the greens and other edibles  
Scully brought back were actually quite good.  
After she showed him where she had found the  
clay, Mulder spent several fruitful hours  
recreating her clay bakeware. The resulting pot  
with lid, seized with oil from the deer meat  
roasted in it, made an excellent dutch oven when  
buried in hot coals. Mulder was so pleased with  
it, he made another just in case they broke the  
first one.

They were halfway through January when they  
realized that they were almost ready. The deer  
hides were tanned, they each had a soft leather  
shirt to wear under their vests and their jackets  
had acquired hoods of warm fox fur. Leather  
leggings covered tattered jeans and for the most  
part, with the leather acting as a windstop and  
the fur turned to the inside for an insulating  
layer, they found them adequately warm. Of  
course, mostly that was due to the high energy  
activities they were engaged in when away from  
the fire, and the trade off was an enormous need  
for fuel.

The fish helped, as did the acorns,but the  
additional muscle mass they were rapidly gaining,  
as well as the caloric cold deficit ate into  
their stores of deer meat at alarming rates.  
Mulder started putting on a Dutch oven of rabbit  
stew in the mornings just to give them something  
to eat between meals.

They could not stop eating.

Scully was giving serious contemplation to going  
after two or three more deer when another  
opportunity presented itself. At least that was  
how she described it after the fact. Asinine and  
reckless were the kindest words that Mulder used  
after he calmed down. She did not have a  
descriptive phrase for it herself. She had been  
too busy running for her life.

Despite the appeal of a bear skin blanket,  
neither Mulder nor Scully had any intention of  
hunting bear with 9mm handguns. The thought was  
ludicrous. So Scully had taken careful note of  
the one bear den she did find and kept as far  
away from it as possible. Avoiding it entirely  
would have been better, but not practical. So she  
was careful.

Unfortunately, Fate resolved to stir things up  
and while Scully was checking her fishing lines,  
the hibernating bear decided it was time to take  
a pee and find a few winter berries to snack on  
before he went back to sleep. She did the only  
thing she could do...

She ran.

Playing dead only works if the bear attacking you  
thinks you are a threat. Most mother bears will  
settle for batting you around a few times until  
she is satisfied her cubs are safe. That does not  
mean however that the unhappy human is not going  
to get badly torn or chewed. And unfortunately,  
there are two types of bear attacks.

Playing dead with the second type just gets you  
eaten.

Having no idea which this would be, and knowing  
that at full speed a bear can run down a human  
without even trying, Scully headed for the trees.  
Black bears can climb too, but a full grown black  
bear weighs over three hundred pounds. Unless he  
is serious, he isn't going up that high.

And since he is heading up the tree with paws and  
claws occupied, it's possible to pull a 9mm  
handgun and put an entire clip into the roof of  
his open mouth before his teeth grab hold. He  
also makes an impressive hole in the branches  
when he falls out of the tree.

Still, avoiding the bear in the first place is  
the safest strategy for all involved.

Scully stared down at the motionless cinnamon  
furred lump for the better part of half an hour  
before climbing shakily out of the tree. Once  
on the ground she backed away from the body  
carefully, just in case there were any stray  
electrical impulses floating around the beast's  
jaws or paws.

Then she headed for the camp at high speed.

The bear was big and she was going to need help  
skinning and dragging it back to camp. That was  
not, however, the reason she was racing through  
the snow as fast as her snowshoes could carry  
her.

There was absolutely no way Mulder missed those  
gunshots.

She was barely sixty seconds into camp when she  
was picked up, shaken and spun around in a human  
version of a tornado. After doing his best to  
squeeze the last of her air from her lungs,  
Mulder frantically went searching for broken  
bones, open wounds and other medical horrors.  
Then, when he finally understood that she was  
safe, he started to yell. And shake.

Finally she just wrapped her arms around his  
waist and waited him out. His voice had trailed  
off into incoherence and she suspected that the  
only thing holding him up was the grip he had on  
her shoulders. Mulder could fling himself into  
the hunt with the best of them, but pacing around  
camp gives the adrenaline no place to go.

For someone used to being able to do something  
about the things that scared him, Mulder had just  
spent an hour in his own personalized version of  
Hell. Given the circumstances, Scully could  
forgive a little shouting. What she would have  
done under the same circumstances did not bear  
thinking about.

However, they had work to do. Satisfied that her  
partner was done with his hysterics, she tossed  
him his snowshoes and grabbed extra knives, ropes  
and sled. Mulder even managed to maintain his  
cool until they made it back to the bear and he  
saw the size of the thing.

Since the curse words did not seem to be aimed  
directly at her, Scully ignored them in favor of  
trying to figure out exactly how they were going  
to do this. There was no way they were hoisting  
this beast into a tree even if the ropes would  
hold him.

Ultimately, Mulder scooped out the contents of  
the body cavity to keep it from tainting the meat  
while she loosened the fur from the carcass.  
Ordinarily they would spread the fur on the sled  
and place the meat inside it, but the bear was  
too heavy to roll out of his fur. Instead, they  
starting hacking off chunks of meat and placed  
them on clean snow to they went, Scully  
was able to separate large chunks of bear fat and  
these went in a separate pile to freeze.

As the pile of meat grew, they were finally able  
to roll the carcass from side to side by pulling  
up on one side of the fur or the other. Mulder  
took the first load of meat back to camp and  
started a fire in the smoker while Scully  
continued trimming meat from the bear. The large  
size of the bones made it impossible to joint the  
meat easily and there was no way they were going  
to be able to crack the rib cage without serious  
effort.

They would have left most of the bones for the  
scavengers, but Mulder wanted the ribs for the  
travel sleds. Scully figured he would probably  
find a use for the heavy leg bones as well.

Five trips were needed to get it everything back  
to camp. In spite of the blood, nothing bothered  
them. Whether it was the smell of the bear or the  
smell of the humans was anybody's guess. As nice  
as the meat was, however, the real treasure was  
the hide. Adequate as they were for clothes, the  
deer hides just would not be warm enough as  
blankets once they were on the trail. Not if they  
ended up using hastily built or snow-type  
shelters.

The bear hide solved that problem quite neatly.

In the end, she did not even have to use the  
brain to tan the hide. There was so much oil in  
the skin, she simply had to scrape it off as it  
oozed from the leather. It took two days to build  
the frame to stretch it out and another two weeks  
before it was ready for smoking, but in the end  
they had a luxuriously soft and warm - albeit  
heavy - bear blanket.

With the addition of almost two hundred pounds of  
high fat bear meat, they were able to scale back  
their food gathering efforts to acorn foraging  
and the traplines. They did not need the meat,  
but they needed the rabbit fur.

Most of the remaining deer hides were stitched  
tightly together to form a tent designed to  
stretch over a detachable wooden skeleton similar  
in design to the wedge-shaped burrow they  
currently occupied. The easily assembled  
structure could then be covered in snow. The  
temperature inside would never get above zero-but  
it would never get below a few degrees below zero  
either- no matter how cold it got outside. The  
remaining deerskins would be thrown over pine  
boughs to protect them from the ground while a  
rabbit skin blanket and the bear skin would  
act as an arctic sleeping bag.

Mulder threw himself into the task of building  
their sleds, while Scully finished preparing  
everything else for the journey. By the second  
week of February, after the worst of the cold  
weather had mostly passed, their preparations  
were complete.

Each sled was just over eight feet long and two  
feet wide. Four of their maple stick boxes fit  
comfortably in a single layer with room along the  
sides for the pieces of the tent skeleton. Each  
sled was designed to carry eight boxes in a  
double layer. The sled itself was strong enough  
to be hoisted into the trees to keep the food  
from tempting predators. Of the eight boxes on  
each sled, six carried food -four of meat, one of  
acorns and one filled with various containers of  
everything else from cranberries to onions. One  
box on each sled held various cooking utensils  
and misc. tools. Mulder's eighth box held their  
leather working tools, rawhide lace and other  
odds and ends. The remaining rabbit pelts were  
bundled and loosely tied on top. Scully's extra  
box held everything else that they could not fit  
in elsewhere.

The hides stacked on top of the boxes and would  
be tied down with ropes on the trail. Their extra  
rabbit socks, whatever clothing they were not  
wearing, the extra knives and three days worth of  
smoked meat and acorns were stuffed in the  
deerskin packs they would wear on their backs.

Amazingly, after almost five months, they were  
ready.

It was almost anticlimactic. Suddenly there was  
no more work to be done. They had more than  
enough food from what was being left behind that  
they did not have to hunt. There were no clothes  
to make, no hides to tan, no place to be.

Mulder laughed when Scully complained that it was  
like taking a vacation.

They did clean out the fridge, though. Mindful of  
the calories they were going to use, both agents  
spent the last two weeks of February eating  
everything they could stuff down their throats.  
Whatever they did not eat was getting tossed to  
the wolves, and they had worked too hard to do  
that lightly.

And then it was time.

February 28, four months and three weeks after  
they were kidnapped by a psychotic, Mulder and  
Scully built a bonfire and burned all evidence of  
their enforced stay in the wild. They covered the  
latrine with the bedding they hauled out from  
their burrow the next morning and tossed the last  
of their uneaten food to the wild.

With the worst of the winter storms behind them,  
the morning of March 1 dawned bright and clear  
and Agents Mulder and Scully started the next  
stage of their long journey home.

*********************************

Ordinary citizens had a hell of a time getting  
themselves declared dead if they were  
inconsiderate enough not to leave a body. The  
implications were quite staggering when one  
considered that until that official death  
certificate was signed, insurance would not be  
paid out, the sale or disposition of assets would  
be frozen and the assets themselves could be  
taken over by the government unless a valid power  
of attorney was held by someone else and pensions  
could not be collected.

It also made it difficult to pay the rent on  
apartments and the insurance on cars when the  
paychecks stopped arriving.

Skinner filed all the necessary paperwork needed  
to keep the money flowing for as long as  
possible. As federal agents, it would have been  
easy for the estates of either agent to file to  
have them legally declared dead. The  
circumstances of their disappearance as well as  
their occupations meant that precedent existed.

Margaret Scully had flat out refused to take that  
step for her daughter and had forcefully  
threatened to go to court to have him stopped if  
Mulder's lawyer made any such attempt regarding  
Mulder. In addition to the fact that Margaret had  
both legal powers of attorney, as her daughter's  
heir and the ultimate beneficiary of Mulder's  
estate since he had left everything to his  
partner, everything would have ended up in  
Maggie's hands anyway. The lawyer conceded that  
it wouldn't exactly look good to the court to  
have the beneficiary fighting to keep from  
inheriting.

The courts get nasty about lawyers who look like  
they are doing things just to create billable  
hours.

Besides, with the estate in trust, the lawyer was  
collecting a nice retainer as a trustee fee. He  
was in no particular hurry to accrue legal  
expenses which could come back on him if he lost  
the case or his client returned from the dead.

In spite of the AD's best efforts, the agents'  
paychecks would cease six months from the day of  
their assumed deaths and Administration was going  
to take another long hard look at the status of  
the X-Files. Luckily both Mulder and Scully had  
set up flexible financial arrangements that took  
long term disappearances into consideration and  
Skinner thought he had a solution to the other  
half of the problem.

That solution was going to give birth to the  
pissing contest from hell if Mulder and Scully  
ever returned.

When they returned, Skinner chastised himself  
mentally. When they returned.

But the fact was, that they might not. So he had  
to consider how best to protect their interests  
and how to position the FBI for the coming war if  
they had to go on without them. In a way, their  
disappearance had created the circumstances which  
gave him the credibility to pull this off.

The VCU had profilers who studied ritual crime.  
Religious nutdom of some kind was a favorite  
flavor of psychosis among serial killers. But  
there were no agents that specifically  
specialized in all flavors of the paranormal. As  
a profiler and as a member of the X-files team,  
Mulder had filled a niche that the FBI had never  
officially recognized...just used when it became  
necessary.

That was about to change.

Without an official place to dump the  
unexplained, Administration was beginning to  
realize just how many query calls Mulder and  
Scully had taken. How many police officers and  
profilers from across the country routinely  
called in asking for this about vampires or that  
about werewolves. It was rarely that they thought  
they had a werewolf, but if the killer thought he  
was a werewolf then the pathology of the crime  
still fit.

They also discovered just how many civilians  
called in regarding everything from UFO sightings  
to bumps in the night. Looking for clues, cases  
and connections, Mulder had talked to them all.  
Again, now the switchboard had no clue where to  
send them.

The on-line database had just increased the  
problem. Police cases that formerly got shoved  
under the desk or behind a drawer were now being  
sent to the FBI. The backlog was getting out of  
control and the mailroom clerks were scared to go  
into the basement office for fear of falling  
files.

So...the solution.

Maggie Scully had refused a funeral for either  
her daughter or her partner. But she had held a  
memorial service for them on Scully's birthday  
and a general invitation had been issued. Skinner  
had been very surprised at the number of people  
who had shown up.

Some of them were old acquaintances and friends.  
A surprising number of the growing legion of  
MUFON and other internet network administrators  
had arrived to pay their respects...and take  
surreptitious photos of the crowd. More than a  
few local police officers had stood in uniformed  
clusters as had a small crowd of lab techs and  
support staff.

Some had shown out of respect, some in anger for  
the perceived injustice of the treatment the  
agents had received, and others because of a  
burgeoning belief in the cause they had fought  
for.

The five agents currently being ushered into his  
office had also been there.

On his orders.

The past was dead, Skinner realized suddenly.  
Even if Mulder and Scully returned tomorrow, the  
wheel had turned and the future would go on with  
or without them. He wasn't even sure how they  
would function within the new structure of the  
team. Their habits had been established to meet  
certain needs that no longer existed.

How would they deal with those changes?

Feeling a touch of sadness for the fact that this  
new team, no matter how they evolved, no matter  
what they encountered, would never truly  
understand what it had been like in the  
beginning. Would, in fact, probably never truly  
understand their predecessors even if they had  
the chance to meet them. The survival traits that  
Mulder and Scully had acquired would be seen as  
nothing more than idiosyncrasies.

Were his mavericks even capable of operating as  
part of a larger team? Maybe. Hopefully. He  
prayed he would have a chance to find out.

It was a given that the team would be called upon  
to assist the VCU. As a result, the inclusion of  
a profiler had been a foregone conclusion. Agent  
Mathews wasn't one of Patterson's Children of the  
Night, but he was solid, experienced and very  
very good at his job. Agent Vickery held a double  
degree in Accounting and Computer Science while  
Agent Landers was not only an ex-marine, she was  
a crack shot, had a black belt in a free form  
version of jujitsu and a degree in Criminal  
Psychology. Skinner had specifically chosen her  
over others with similar qualifications because  
of her fighting skills. The team would have  
standing orders to place themselves directly  
under her tutelage for regular training.

Mulder and Scully would be the last X-Files  
agents taken out by serial killers, bank robbers  
or any other form of low-life pond scum criminal  
if he had anything to say about it.

They might still get hurt, but it would not be  
for lack of training. HRT was going to look easy  
compared to the program he had in store for them.  
Besides, if they were going to save the world,  
they were going to need to know a few things  
about scaling walls and running for your life.

Hoo-yah.

The fourth member of the team was Agent Harris.  
Both he and Agent Lewis were so new they  
squeaked. Skinner had never forgotten how useful  
Agent Pendrell had been. Harris had been turned  
down twice already. In spite of the extra courses  
he took at night, in spite of the self-defense  
courses he took, he had two things working  
solidly against him. First, he was extremely good  
as a lab tech - it did not matter that he wasn't  
happy there - the government was thrilled with  
his job performance. The second was that he  
looked like a lab tech. In person and on paper.  
He just did not stand out against all those other  
police officers, ex-military and people with  
double degrees.

But AD Skinner was looking for very specific  
qualities. The X-Files dealt with strange  
substances and weird lab reports so often, it  
would not only be useful to have someone who  
could read the data- in a pinch, he could do the  
tests himself. Especially if they found  
it...prudent...to protect the credibility of  
those same lab tests.

Skinner had seen too many doctored lab results to  
doubt that Harris would be worth his weight in  
gold. Throw in his dogged determination, drive  
and commitment and Skinner had requested his  
training and transfer personally.

And finally, Agent Lewis. He had been on the  
look-out for someone like her for almost two  
years. Ever since Mulder and Scully had returned  
from Antarctica and he had realized that there  
was not only a virus, but that there was a cure.  
A cure that both his agents harbored in their  
blood and bone. But Scully was the wrong kind of  
doctor. Despite what she could teach herself,  
despite what she had been forced to learn over  
the years, she lacked the basic skills to  
reverse engineer a vaccine. Assuming it could  
even be done.

So he had gone looking for someone. Someone they  
could trust and someone who could hide the real  
work beneath the paranormal reality of the X-  
Files.

Agent Lewis was the result of that search.

Officially, she was a paper geneticist with no  
internship or practical experience. The ink on  
her university degree wasn't even dry before she  
signed the application papers to the FBI. But  
unofficially, Lewis had spent three years on an  
in-field virology team as an unpaid lab assistant  
from the age of seventeen. Her mother had been  
the head of research for a team doing field work  
on the Ebola virus. Lewis had returned home to  
the US to complete her studies while her mother  
ended up in the middle east as part of a UN team  
investigating bio weapons charges.

The charges turned out to be true.

The terrorists were poor, but they knew their  
bioscience. The jury-rigged weapon that the  
suicide bomber exploded in the center of the  
downtown market infected 4000 people in less than  
fifteen minutes. By the time they were done  
counting bodies, Agent Lewis's mother was among  
the casualties.

Lewis applied for the Academy the day she  
graduated. Too young, too overqualified for  
a lab position and without any secondary training  
in psychology or forensics, she just wasn't what  
the FBI was looking for. They did not need  
geneticists. Especially geneticists who wanted to  
join the anti-terrorism division and had an  
obvious ax to grind.

But AD Walter Skinner did.

As far as he was concerned, she was a gift from  
heaven. She was on a plane to the Academy so fast  
it probably made her head spin. He had already  
planted a seed. He had casually brought up some  
of the stranger medical anomalies and virally  
related cases as examples of the type of work the  
X-Files did.

Mulder's encounter with the retrovirus just sort  
of came up in conversation.

She was not stupid. She could guess that he was  
bringing up cases he thought would interest her.  
But any resentment over being manipulated did not  
have much of a chance against the fact that he  
was right. He had a feeling she was going to be  
giving the old case files an extremely close  
going over as soon as she had access. If he  
wasn't mistaken, that alone would be enough to  
drive the team in the direction he wanted. Once  
they were there...

Well, there were samples of Mulder and Scully's  
blood and tissue in a cold storage facility that  
only he and three close-mouthed computer hackers  
knew about.

These five people had just become soldiers in a  
war they knew nothing about. He could not even  
bring himself to regret that he had put them  
square in the line of fire. He needed them too  
badly and too many others had paid coin in blood  
to let him give up now.

Knowing Mulder, he would be on his doorstep like  
Jacob Marley, chains and all if he did. Scully  
had less of a sense of humor about that sort of a  
thing. She would just make sure he never slept  
again. Ever. Probably shriek like a banshee and  
lurk at the foot of his bed like some ice-eyed  
archangel of Hell.

And he had given them a backhanded sort of a  
warning. He had made sure they were at the  
memorial service. They had gotten a good hard  
look at the costs this division could demand.

Its less than sterling reputation.

They were still here.

And they had a job to do. 


	6. Chapter 6

Thinking about it later, they realized that they  
were each hauling almost 150 lbs of sled and gear  
and an additional 40-50lbs on their backs.  
Surprising, Scully had the advantage as long as  
they were on the older snowpacks. They found that  
most of their pulling power came from their legs  
and hips, and with her lower center of gravity,  
she managed as easily if not more so than her  
physically taller and stronger partner.

That only lasted until they found themselves  
floundering in deep fluffy snow and the lifting  
power and upper body strength began to play into  
things. As a result, they found themselves  
packing the sleds with the heavier furs and skins  
going to whoever was going to have an easier time  
of it. Scully found herself grinning the morning  
she watched her partner unthinkingly hand her the  
heavier sled...and he did not even think twice  
about it.

Chivalry gave way to practicality extremely  
quickly.

Their plan had been to go until the first four  
food boxes were emptied. With luck, they would  
have reached civilization by then. If not, they  
would take a couple of days per week to set traps  
and hunt to replenish their food stores as they  
used them.

Whether because they were using higher fat cuts  
of meat, because their activity level was  
actually not much higher than they were already  
used to, or because of the warmer temperatures,  
they found that they did not go through their  
foodstores nearly as quickly as they thought they  
would.

They were each carrying an estimated 60 pounds of  
dried meat-the equivalent of almost double that  
in fresh. They had assumed that it would last  
them about three weeks give or take. Scully soon  
figured that unless something changed, they could  
double that estimate. Except for taking time to  
forage for more acorns, they actually had little  
need to hunt for food at all.

All in all, that was probably a good thing.

They had thought that they had gotten themselves  
into good shape over the past five months. Fat  
had melted away, cardio had been pushed to the  
limit by all the trudging through snow and  
muscles were rock solid. Heck, they were  
discovering muscles they did not know they had.

Now they were discovering a few more.

They were up by first light and gone an hour  
later. In that hour alone, they lowered the sleds  
out of trees, lifted, folded and repacked  
deer hides, tent hides and fur blankets. Then they  
followed up on this with six hours of back-  
breaking, mind-numbing, leg burning  
uphill/downhill exercise that Scully could only  
compare to the Stairmaster from Hell.

Then the work began.

It may have been staying lighter later into the  
day, but they needed every second. They would  
spend an hour digging into the snow, pitching  
their shelter and then covering it with snow.  
Then came the hunt for firewood and the back-  
breaking, finger cramping task of starting a fire  
from scratch with bow and drill, and finally  
dinner.

They had been careful with their matches and they  
had done well over the last five months. But they  
were down to the last few and they had determined  
to save those for emergencies. Carrying hot coals  
had proved to be an impossible task so they found  
themselves doing it the old fashioned way.

Scully swore to put matchbooks in every pocket of  
every item of clothing she ever owned from this  
point on until she died. Mulder very seriously  
suggested sewing some into the liners of their  
jackets. She only had to think about the fact it  
was her turn to start the fire and she agreed.

For that reason and also not to waste the hard  
earned coals, Mulder took to dumping the stew  
ingredients into his clay pot turned slow cooker  
and burying it in the coals at night. The result  
was a cooked stew ready to be placed in the sled  
and that only needed reheating for a quick lunch  
or dinner. They quickly came to appreciate having  
two clay cookers, the second being used to make  
their acorn porridge for breakfast.

After dinner came hauling the sleds into the  
trees and mandatory sponge baths. There was no  
way they could risk sweat rashes or trench  
anything at this stage of the game. They had  
survived five months with all their toes and  
fingers...it would be foolish to do something  
stupid now that it was warming up.

Warming up was a relative term of course. It was  
still below zero most of the time. Occasionally  
though the temperature rose high enough to give  
the daytime temperatures a high enough nudge that  
the surface of the snow began to get slippery.

It was a good thing for the sleds. The crusts got  
harder as the snow compressed. But Scully was  
beginning to worry about their feet. It wouldn't  
be long before the snow turned slushy on them.  
Between the wolf fur and the rabbit socks their  
feet were warm enough as long as they were  
moving, but they were soaked by the end of the  
day. They started stopping in the middle of the  
day to dry their feet as much as possible and to  
change into dry rabbit socks. Then they spent  
twice as long drying both sets of socks and their  
boots at night. They also started leaving the  
socks off at night to let their feet dry against  
the fur blankets as much as possible and they  
made a point of washing and drying their feet  
again after breakfast.

It was obsessive. And it was absolutely  
essential.

For the rest of it, they found that they were  
wearing less clothes than they expected. Except  
for snowy days or cold evenings, they found  
themselves working with fox hoods down and the  
rabbit hoods in their packs. By the end of March,  
their attire was down to shirt and vest with  
rabbit fur headbands to protect their ears. Even  
then they found themselves leaving the vests  
unlaced at the sides. It was rapidly getting to  
the point where as long as they were moving, they  
needed little more than the deerhide undershirts  
to cut the wind.

Of course, once they stopped, everything had to  
go back on again.

By the end of March, it was fairly clear that  
they were so far from civilization it was not  
funny. Mulder muttered something about ending  
up in Canada and after one quick snort of  
laughter, Scully realized that he probably wasn't  
joking. Their extreme isolation, the climate and  
the environment. All of it pointed to a national  
park. A very large national park.

Glacier National Park was over one million acres  
of primitive backcountry and was only three  
states away from where they had been kidnapped.

All in all, they could very easily end up in  
Canada.

They also had no idea that the road they were on  
was a fire access road that had been cut into the  
forest the summer before during a particularly  
bad fire season. The road was unserviced and the  
forest service was actually letting nature  
reclaim it. Corman had been using it to try and  
keep himself unnoticed. The road itself appeared  
on no maps, was not part of the backcountry ski  
trail system and they had no idea that they were  
lost in the most remote part of the park and  
actually heading deeper into it.

Corman had gained access to the fire line by  
virtue of an old logging spur that had  
intersected with the dirt track. Unfortunately,  
the clear-cut sides of the logging road had  
looked like open meadow and the agents hadn't  
even known they were walking past the road which  
had brought them there. They had followed the  
obvious unnaturally straight line cut through the  
trees and instead of heading toward civilization,  
walked directly away from it.

Five weeks and 497 km after they left their  
campsite, Mulder and Scully stepped out onto a  
deserted but plowed road and stopped dead. In  
disbelief they stared at the evidence of  
civilization at their feet and wondered what in  
the hell they were supposed to do now.

"Left or right Scully?"

His partner took one look at him and started to  
laugh.

***************************

Deputy Todd Perkins was bored. Not only was he  
working night shift in a sleepy map dot of a  
town, but it was a Monday night. Tuesday night  
was movie night and Wednesday was wing night  
over at Bob's Tavern. Thursday was payday  
for everyone working at the plant and Friday  
...well, Friday was Friday. But nothing ever  
happened on a Monday.

He had checked.

For the last ten years, according to Miller's Gap  
crime statistics, the only thing that had ever  
happened on a Monday night was the time Fred  
Durst's cattle had broken through the fence and  
ended up tromping through Edna Crane's vegetable  
garden. Even then Edna wasn't threatening to  
shoot Fred, she was threatening to shoot George  
and Daisy.

If Todd remembered correctly, a large chunk of  
George ended up in Edna's freezer courtesy of a  
contrite Fred who, now that his wife was gone,  
had been actively trying to get Edna into bed for  
almost two years. In terms of relative  
priorities, George never had a chance.

Too far from the highway to be a good gas stop,  
too poor to be picturesque and too far from the  
plant to be a favored bedroom community, Miller's  
Gap eked out a living by catering to the summer  
tourist crowd which consisted mainly of back  
roads campers and week-end cottagers from the  
city. Considering that Miller's Gap was a good  
four hour's drive from the city limits, most of  
the cottagers had inherited their property or  
bought it in anticipation of future retirement.

Miller's Gap had a summer week-end population of  
about 4000 and a week-day and wintertime  
population of 350. And since the cottagers  
considered themselves to be locals, albeit locals  
who socialized in a completely different social  
strata and community network than the local  
locals, they stayed home and refinished the back  
deck instead of heading for the bar on Monday  
nights.

So nothing much happened on a Monday.

Which is why when he noticed two vagrants camping  
in the day park he actually bothered to stop.  
Then he noticed other things. Like their  
weathered features, the leather clothing and the  
sleds that seemed to be packed with furs. He did  
not see two FBI agents. He did not even see that  
they were sober and not making any threatening  
moves. Nor did he see that they were actually  
starting to smile.

Deputy Perkins saw two scruffy, lank-haired  
criminals, probably native trappers from their  
outfits,with a shit load of illegal furs. He  
saw that he was twenty feet from his truck and  
that there were two of them. He saw broad  
shoulders on a man six inches taller than him  
and well used leather leggings that clung to  
well defined thighs. He saw lean waists, bladed  
cheekbones and glittering eyes.

Then he saw the knives.

*********************************

Scully stared at the ceiling tiles.

"Not quite how you pictured our triumphant  
return, huh Scully?"

She sighed and rolled over on her side, eyeing  
the lanky form of her partner stretched out on  
the cot on the other side of the room.

"Do you ever wonder whether or not our luck is an  
X-File, Mulder?"

He grinned and was about to reply when they heard  
the rattle and bang of the front door and then  
voices and footsteps echoing in the hall. Both  
agents rolled to their feet and were standing  
when the Sheriff flipped on the lights and moved  
toward the jail cell door.

Dark adjusted eyes that were finding the  
fluorescent lights to be unexpectedly painful  
after six months of natural light squinted  
against tears before widening as they recognized  
the bulky form standing at the Sheriff's elbow.  
Both agents stiffened reflexively and they  
watched Assistant Director Skinner slowly move  
his eyes from one to the other, his face rapidly  
losing all expression. Behind the mask, Skinner  
battled a swelling sense of disbelief as he  
absorbed their appearance.

Mulder's hair actually fell to his shoulders for  
the first time in probably two decades-if ever-  
and Skinner noted a surprising breadth of muscle  
across upper arms and chest. The agent had been a  
gangly tangle of skinny arms and legs hidden  
beneath white shirts and tailored suit jackets  
for so long that Skinner had failed to notice the  
changes as he matured. Now, non-essential body  
fat pared away and wearing only supple leather  
leggings that hugged muscled runner's legs, the  
newly revealed strength of body combined with his  
graceful movement and restless air to give him a  
dangerously feral look more suited to his animal  
namesake than Special Agent Mulder, FBI.

But if Mulder looked dangerous, his partner  
looked deadly. Icy blue eyes roved constantly,  
not really looking, but scanning. Her body was  
held with almost unnatural poise and the coiled  
energy was more sensed than seen, explosive  
potential waiting to detonate into motion. Her  
hair flowed in a wild tumble down bare shoulders  
that curved with a wiry ripple of muscle that ran  
down her upper arms and forearms and across her  
chest. A white fur brassiere of some lace up  
variety left cleavage and ridged abdomen  
aggressively exposed while her grayish brown  
leather leggings clung to thigh and calf.

Both agents stood in bare feet, barely clothed in  
outfits that would have done a costume designer  
from Xena:Warrior Princess proud. Their bodies  
bore the visible marks of weather and strenuous  
labor and they should have looked silly. They  
should have looked incongruous. They sure as hell  
did not look like FBI agents. But instead of  
looking like the shattered survivors of six  
months of purgatory, they looked blindingly  
alive, lethally primed and absurdly healthy.

They *were* being rescued, right?

Unlike his two wayward investigators who,  
unbeknownst to him, were viewing their current  
situation with nothing more than mild aggravation  
and some rueful amusement, Skinner found himself  
battling a torrent of emotions that snapped  
frighteningly into focus when he saw the blue  
marks from someone's fingers clearly imprinted on  
Scully's right shoulder.

"Why are they in the same cell together?"

Mulder, who had been shifting bare feet self-  
consciously, froze and regarded his boss warily.  
Scully just narrowed cold eyes and smiled. The  
sheriff, not being in possession of similar  
survival instincts, said nothing about the agents  
refusing to be separated. A fact which Skinner  
would have believed instantly considering it was  
both true and typical. Instead, the man wrinkled  
his nose and explained about wanting to limit  
both the smell and any possible flea or lice  
infestation.

Skinner's voice was biting.

"These agents have survived a serial killer and  
six months in the bush in a Northern Wyoming  
winter and you were worried about a smell?"

The sheriff paled as one word struck him. He  
stammered,"Agents? They really are..." His face  
whitened further as certain comments he had made  
to both of them came back to him.

Skinner's upper lip curled and the sheriff  
hastily fumbled for the keys and unlocked the  
door. Scully actually sauntered through the open  
door with feline disdain and Skinner felt his  
face pulling into a frown as he contemplated the  
scenarios that might have prompted her attitude.  
Not to mention those of the obviously defensive  
sheriff and her partner. Mulder paused as he came  
abreast of the man and stared down at him with a  
profiler's darkness in his eyes.

Skinner felt his breathing tighten as the paunchy  
man whitened still further and leaned back  
slightly as the taller man leaned in. What the  
hell was going on here? Mulder intimidated people  
with the power of his mind or his status as an  
agent of the FBI. He did not intimidate people  
physically. At least, this was the first time  
Skinner had seen him try. Except for his height,  
Mulder just wasn't that scary.

At least, he didn't used to be.

"Thanks for the hospitality."

There was more than silence in the chill depths  
of that voice. Sheriff Rawlins broke into an  
unattractive sweat and then his head jerked as  
Scully chuckled softly. He seemed to shrink as  
he met her eyes. Skinner flinched at the contempt  
she did not bother to hide and her voice held an  
arctic amusement that flayed as it burned.

"Come on Fox, leave the rabbit alone."

Mulder bared his teeth in a lupine grin, then  
padded over to her. "I'm not hungry, anyway."

Skinner actually found himself holding his breath  
as their eyes met and the hallway seemed to shrink.  
Jesus. Who the hell were these people and what had  
they done with his agents? Christ, they were toying  
with the officious fool.

Then both agents dismissed the sheriff with  
insulting totality and headed for the door.  
Skinner found himself focusing briefly on the  
unexpected sight of a circular tattoo on Scully's  
lower back before it was hidden by the palm of  
Mulder's hand. He had forgotten about that. The  
sight sent a visceral and totally unanticipated  
and almost inappropriate response zinging through  
his body.

He wasn't sure why it startled him so much.  
Well, maybe he did. It seemed so shockingly out  
of place for Scully. Out of character. And all  
the times he had seen Mulder put his hand to her  
back, her partner had been touching that  
tattoo...and Skinner suddenly had to wonder if he  
had known it was there.

Was it getting hot in here?

If he had thought the energy that had burned  
between them before was intense, this was almost  
inconceivably incandescent. It was as if the fire  
burning beneath the surface was sucking all the  
oxygen from the room and he found himself  
literally battling a psychosomatic instinct to  
hyperventilate. Jesus Christ. Was this the result  
of six months of fighting for their lives? Or had  
this always existed?

Was this what really lived hidden beneath suits  
and civilized protocols?

Holy Mother of God.

This was what the Consortium had being playing  
games with?

The blind eyed sheriff stared in horror as  
the burly ex-marine started to laugh wildly.

Both agents strode through the station with  
unnerving silence. They paused by a table  
where a twitching deputy was piling several  
unidentifiable objects. Skinner watched uneasily  
as the agents pulled on leather shirts and knee  
high moccasins. Two of the items turned out to be  
packs and both agents appeared satisfied that  
everything was present although Scully was  
frowning over a broken lace on one of her boots.

Instead of knotting it, she nonchalantly  
drew one of the largest hunting knives Skinner  
had ever seen and cut a length of lace from a  
ball Mulder pulled from one of the packs. Then  
she calmly relaced her boot. Considering how  
completely she was ignoring everyone from the  
Deputy to the Sheriff, Skinner had the definite  
suspicion that she had flashed the knife on  
purpose.

On the other hand, both agents were standing with  
packs shouldered before Sheriff Rawlins returned  
with their weapons and clips. Turning towards  
them with guns in hand, Skinner paused as his  
agents' bizarre attire hit him all over again.  
Scully was wearing some sort of leather jacket  
that looked vaguely like a tribute to Daniel  
Boone. In fact, if he ignored the modern style of  
the knife sheathed at her side, she could have  
walked right out of the pages of that novel.

Did that rodent pouch actually have feet and head  
still attached?

Mulder's knife was strapped to his left upper  
thigh -which made sense as he did not appear to  
be possessed of pouch or pockets at the moment.  
Instead of a jacket he wore a leather shirt under  
a white fur vest and between the laces and the  
agent's height, Skinner couldn't decide if he  
looked more like a Viking or a Celt.

Skinner eyed the snowshoes strapped to their  
backs. They did realize that the car was right  
outside didn't they? Then he caught the  
mischievous glint in their eyes and it struck him  
that they were putting on a show. For him? They  
were waiting patiently for his reaction.

He couldn't help it.

The grin he had been holding back, the one that  
had tried to start the moment he had got the call  
from ATF that someone had run the serial numbers  
on their weapons was accompanied by a caroling  
inner shout...

theyarealive!theyarealive!theyarealive!

... and exploded across his face.

They were alive.

First Mulder, then Scully responded and the  
deputies were treated to the sight of three  
federal agents grinning at each other like  
delighted idiots. Then the assistant director  
tossed over weapons and clips. He probably should  
not have done it. Considering their rather  
confused status right now, he should have kept  
guns and ammo-especially since it was obvious  
that both weapons had been fired and the third  
weapon, the one Mulder dropped into Scully's  
pack, had probably belonged to Corman. But he  
would be damned if they walked out of here as  
anything other than fully recognized agents of  
the FBI.

Even if they did look like escapees from Clan of  
the Cave Bear.

"What about the rest of it?"

Skinner jerked his head and stared blankly at the  
deputy glaring sullenly at the former jailbirds.  
The rest? How much stuff did they have? A curious  
glance just garnered him a couple of shrugs and  
he sighed.

The "rest" turned out to be enough fur to pack  
the trunk of the Taurus. Skinner considered the  
bindings on the sleds contemplatively as he  
watched Scully finger the contents of one of the  
stick boxes that made up the bottom layer of  
their sleds. Finally she hesitated, then drew out  
another of those animal pouches. Sudden movement  
near her shoulder caught Skinner off guard and he  
realized that Mulder too, must have been watching  
his partner because he took the pouch from her  
hands, replaced it in the box and after brushing  
her hands aside and throwing in a few items from  
a box on the other sled, slung it into the  
backseat of the car. Skinner winced thinking of  
the damage deposit, then remembered the furs in  
the trunk and realized that it was probably a  
lost cause anyway.

At least neither agent seemed to be scratching.

Scully hadn't moved, nor had her expression  
changed. But when Mulder came back and simply  
said,"Decide later", she astonished Skinner by  
standing up and, without even a glance in her  
AD's direction, wrapped her arms around Mulder's  
waist. At that moment, Skinner determined to have  
an agent sent over from the field office to  
arrange to have all of this stuff shipped to  
Washington. If Mulder and Scully wanted to burn  
it all later at some celebratory bonfire that was  
their choice. He would be damned if he would let  
some stranger destroy something his agents had  
obviously invested hundreds of hours of work and  
energy into. The thought alone of how they had  
acquired that bearskin made his blood run cold.

If the accountants wanted to squawk he would be  
more then happy to...discuss the matter with  
them.

Without further discussion, Scully climbed into  
the back seat with the snowshoes and packs,  
leaving the front seat for Mulder. Skinner headed  
for the field office. About ten minutes down the  
highway, the AD was fiddling with the buttons to  
the heaters. He hadn't noticed anything wrong  
with it earlier, but he had been so focused on  
getting to his missing agents-to make sure that  
it really was them-that he probably wouldn't have  
noticed if the car even had a heater. Now, with  
his two passengers sweating uncomfortably into  
furs and leathers, the car was warm enough that  
the windows were beginning to fog up.

As a side effect, the smell that the Sheriff had  
mentioned was making itself noticed. It wasn't  
precisely unpleasant, the AD told himself, just  
strong. Very strong. Most predominant was the  
heavy odor of woodsmoke. Beneath that was the  
light scent of leather mixed with pungent human  
musk. Not a rancid or oily smell it was cut with  
the woodsy odor of pine and the tang of human  
sweat. Except for the woodsmoke, it was a clean  
animal smell like you would expect from a horse  
blanket or animal den.

Considering that they had just spent six months  
without soap and deodorant, Skinner was surprised  
that it wasn't actually that repellent. He still  
remembered staying upwind of the scouting parties  
getting back to base in-country. Back then, he  
hadn't known which was worse, the smell, the heat  
or the lice.

Skinner eyed the side of Mulder's head  
speculatively, then made a quick executive  
decision and headed for the nearest Wal-Mart.  
Neither agent had spoken a word since they had  
gotten into the car. A quick sideways glance  
showed only patiently calm faces and a quick  
glance at Scully's eyes in the rearview mirror  
showed him an expression he hadn't seen in  
over twenty years.

It was the expression you saw when a group of  
soldiers had been with each other so long that  
all the small talk had been talked out and all  
that was left was silence. Everyone knew what had  
to be done, so there was no need to talk about  
it. That was how you could always tell the  
newbies. They talked. God how they talked. Until  
they lived past the first six months.

They eventually shut up.

One way or the other.

Most people talk to fill the emptiness. Mulder  
and Scully had already gone past that. It was one  
of the things that unnerved people who spent time  
in their company when they were not concentrating  
on being sociable.

But this was a whole other category of  
speechlessness.

He was actually looking forward to seeing the  
effect they had on the Hoover Building. He rather  
wondered if he should bring popcorn. Then again,  
when they found out about the invasion of their  
offices, he might need body armor.

Mulder and Scully silently followed him into the  
store and waited patiently as he came to a halt  
beside the cash machine. It was Tuesday. It would  
be at least Thursday before they got back to  
Washington. Way too late for them to get anything  
sorted out at the bank. Pulling his daily cash  
limit from his card he handed each of them $200  
and then gave his Bureau credit card to Scully.

He shrugged awkwardly when she raised a curious  
eyebrow.

"We may be here a couple days. Use the card to  
get anything you need. The money is for food and  
incidentals. Your accounts are all frozen and it  
may be a few days before you can get any money  
advanced. If you need any more, let me know."

Both agents thanked him quietly, frowns creeping  
over their faces in tandem. As they stood there  
lost in contemplation, Skinner realized that this  
was probably the first time they had really  
started to consider the difficulties with picking  
up their old lives.

He knew from experience that it wasn't the big  
changes that threw you. It was small things.  
Things like car keys and credit cards and having  
enough money in your pocket to buy pizza. It was  
realizing that you did not even know if you had  
apartments and personal possessions to go back  
to. He cursed as he thought about the fact that  
he should have told them about that stuff first  
off.

"There's no food in the fridge, and the cleaning  
lady only comes in to dust once a week, but your  
places are waiting for you. We put your cars in  
storage and Mulder, your fish tank is at my  
place. They are all alive."

He carefully did not look at the agents as he  
spoke, keeping his voice casual. Even so, he  
heard the tiny indrawn breath from Scully's  
direction and felt more than saw Mulder touch  
her shoulder. A rustle of leather as they moved  
apart and her voice came across extremely  
controlled and quiet as she simply said,"Thank-  
you, Sir". Skinner caught the bob of Mulder's  
adam's apple as the agent swallowed sharply and  
then nodded in agreement.

They stood like that for another long moment  
until the doors slammed open and a family of five  
crashed through them, the kids hollering  
something about Breakfast Burritos. All three FBI  
agents started momentarily, then they all  
laughed. At themselves, at the situation, but  
mostly just for being alive.

Skinner hesitated then offered his calling card  
to Scully if she wanted to call her mother. He  
was startled when she hesitated.

"Does she know?"

Skinner just shook his head.

Scully drew in a deep breath. "Then I'll wait  
until I get back to the motel, Sir."

He was about to protest when he realized what  
Mulder had probably already known since he did  
not seem surprised in the least. She was going to  
need time and privacy for the call itself, and  
probably afterwards. Hell. It was only 5am back  
in Washington. He should have remembered  
that.

Then she was gone.

Skinner blinked. One minute she was standing  
there. The next minute she had handed Mulder the  
credit card and was gone. Mulder just started to  
whistle tunelessly as he grabbed a cart and  
headed for the clothing section. For lack of  
anything better to do, Skinner followed him.

Two pairs of jeans, two black sweaters and a t-  
shirt were swiftly joined by a six-pack of socks  
and three pairs of boxers. Skinner then watched  
enthralled as Mulder ignored the stunned (and  
interested)looks from the sales ladies in women's  
wear and rapidly added jeans, sweaters, t-shirt,  
bras, socks and a triple pack of Hanes Her Way  
underwear for his partner. Skinner noted that he  
added an extra t-shirt that was both oversized  
and too long and he realized that he now knew  
what Scully would be sleeping in.

What a bizarre day this was turning out to be.

And if Mulder was doing the shopping, where was  
Scully?

Looking at his watch he realized that they had  
barely been in the store fifteen minutes and  
Mulder was already headed for the sundries  
section. Hell. Who said that men did not know how  
to shop?

Skinner was frankly beginning to enjoy himself.  
The incongruity of Mulder's wild man appearance  
clashed with the domestic picture he did not even  
know he was making. Did Mulder even realize that  
he was talking to himself? It was an unusual peek  
into a partnership that had always fascinated  
him.

Soap, shampoo, a fluffy bath sponge, moisturizer,  
deodorants, toothbrushes, toothpaste, blue and  
pink packages of disposable razors, his and hers  
shaving creams and a box of Tampax all ended up  
in the cart in less than five minutes. It was  
when Mulder paused to search for a particular  
brand of shampoo that Skinner realized that he  
was actually making choices not just pulling the  
first thing off the shelf that he saw.

Eidetic memory, Skinner remembered. Scanning the  
choices in the cart he wondered how many of the  
choices he was making for his partner were brands  
she preferred. Probably all of them, he thought  
ruefully.

Two pairs of black Brooks sneakers and two black  
duffel bags later, Mulder was pushing the cart  
through the checkout and Scully was walking  
toward them juggling three large bags from  
McDonald's and a cardboard tray of coffee.

Mulder's eyes lit up.

"Caffeine!"

Skinner considered the likely effects of a  
caffeine high on a man who had been clean for six  
months. He almost groaned. Scully was looking  
over the contents of the cart when Skinner heard  
her laugh.

"Jesus Mulder. We're going to look like the  
Bobbsey Twins."

The agent protested,"Hey, I got your sweaters  
in different colors and the ivory one even has a  
cable pattern."

Scully placed a hand solemnly over her heart,"I  
stand corrected. Ya did good Mulder. Here's your  
reward."

Mulder all but drooled as she handed him the food  
sacks and then she was swiftly dividing the  
contents of the cart and efficiently packing them  
into the appropriate duffel after the girl rang  
them through. Skinner barely even glanced at the  
total before signing the slip and replacing the  
card into his wallet.

He was more interested in watching his agents  
eat.

In the most co-ordinated food ballet he had ever  
seen, they handed bags and tray back and forth as  
they shouldered duffel bags and headed for the  
car. Between the checkout and the parking lot,  
they had eaten four breakfast burritos between  
them.

They weren't pigs about it. They were just very  
efficient. And hungry. Mulder handed his boss an  
egg McMuffin as soon as he was behind the wheel  
and then Skinner watched in disbelief as they  
proceeded to polish off eight more Breakfast  
Burritos, four egg McMuffins, six hash browns and  
two cups of coffee. That was when Skinner  
realized that the remaining egg McMuffin, six  
Burritos, and two hash browns were for him. When  
he told the agents faintly that he wasn't hungry,  
they ate those too.

They pulled up to the field office before he  
found out if they were hungry enough to start  
chewing on the upholstery. He thought at first  
that maybe they had gone hungry for two or three  
days but Mulder remarked casually that they had  
eaten before they got arrested.

So that was just breakfast.

He fiddled with the air vents as the windows  
starting fogging up again.

He only meant to pop in for a second, meet the  
local SAC and then explain that he would be back  
once his agents had a chance to clean up. The  
smell wasn't bad, but it was still...a smell. If  
he had been thinking at all he would have used  
his cell phone. They were ten feet into the doors  
when alarms were suddenly screaming their  
electronic heads off and agents were slamming  
into the foyer, weapons drawn.

Skinner had his own weapon half out before he  
realized the muzzles were all pointing behind  
him. He turned to see Mulder and Scully with  
their hands in the air, expressions of surprise  
and resignation on their faces. Skinner's own  
surprise lasted until he got a good look at them.

His first thought was "Oh shit, I forget about  
the knives."

His second,"Oh fuck. They went into Wal-Mart like  
that."

Well, hell. They were lucky nobody called the  
cops. That would have been cute. Not out of jail  
45 minutes and the local SAC would have been  
bailing all three of them out.

He was so used to thinking about his agents as  
being armed and their whole attire was so bizarre  
that the knives just sort of ...blended. They  
were so unselfconscious he had never even  
noticed.

From the looks on their faces, neither had they.

Luckily the SAC knew his face and had a sense of  
humor. He also had a camera. Turns out he even  
had the sleds to use as a backdrop. The local PD  
had unilaterally decided that they wanted  
everything to do with the FBI as far away from  
them as it could get and had dropped off the  
whole kit and caboodle about fifteen minutes  
prior.

The local agents were familiar with Wyoming  
winters and were inclined to be amazed and  
admiring. One of the security guards was an avid  
hunter and the look on his face when he saw the  
bearskin sent shivers down the AD's spine. The  
look when he found out that Scully had shot it  
with a 9mm told him more adequately than words  
just how close his agent had come.

Knowing that the reaction from their colleagues  
in Washington was more likely to be disdain for  
getting themselves captured in the first place  
than admiration for their survival skills,  
Skinner wandered off to talk with the SAC while  
they enjoyed their 15 seconds of fame.

SAC Rivers just grinned as a lab tech rushed by  
carry a handful of film.

"His wife teaches social anthropology at the  
college down the street. Five gets you ten she  
wants pictures of *everything*."

He was right.

There was a regular photo op going on in the  
parking lot. Mulder was lounging good-naturedly  
against one of the sleds. The bearskin had been  
hauled from the trunk of the car and thrown back  
on top. Scully was talking seriously to a young  
woman who was probably the lab tech's wife. The  
contents of the second sled were being spread out  
across the pavement by a handful of chattering  
teenagers who were probably students.

Anything to get out of class, he supposed.

Except that they seemed genuinely impressed.  
Items that looked like nothing to him...a bone of  
some kind, those snowshoes, each engendered a  
hurried round of whispers and serious study while  
the lab tech took rolls and rolls of pictures.

They were seeing history come to life, he  
realized. This wasn't a textbook picture. This  
wasn't two hundred years ago. This was two people  
who had reinvented Native American tools for a  
specific purpose. The odd thought occurred to him  
that maybe the differences between what the  
natives had created with time and resources  
compared to what his agents had created in need  
could actually tell the students something about  
the people they could no longer interview.

Then he saw something that truly illustrated the  
demands the last six months had made on their  
bodies. They were not showing off. In fact, they  
did it so casually that he got the feeling it was  
something they had done many times before.

Whoever had unloaded the sleds had done a good  
job of placing them out of the way. But with the  
contents of the second sled spread out like sales  
items at a bazaar, the car that pulled into the  
parking lot was forced to a stop. Before the  
driver could decide to back out and go in the  
other entrance, Mulder and Scully each casually  
grabbed an end of the bearskin covered sled and  
lifted it out of the way.

No one spoke for a long moment.

The lab tech snapped several hurried pictures.

Then Scully went back to her conversation like  
nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Which  
is when Skinner realized that for them, nothing  
had.

"It took four agents to get that off the truck.  
Partly it's a question of balance, but it's  
heavier than they think."

Skinner turned to see the SAC watching the two  
agents soberly.

"They don't know their own strength yet."

Skinner just shook his head.

"You have no idea." 


End file.
